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BOOKS BY STEPHEN B. STANTON 

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

The Essential Life. i2mo . . . net $1.00 
Soul and Circumstance. i2mo . net $1.00 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 



BY 

Stephen Berrien Stanton 

Author of " The Essential Life " 



NEW YORK 

Charles Scribner's Sons 

1910 



Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner's Sons 



Published October, 1910 







GU 273 8 46 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Moods and Motives .... 3 

II. The Ivy of Simplicity ... 11 

III. The Artesian Soul .... 22 

IV. Life at Long Range .... 32 
V. The Wastefulness of Worry . 42 

VI. The Crest of Intensity ... 48 

VII. The Dignity of Existence . . 53 

VIII. The Crescendo of Meaning . 74 

IX. The Firmness of Foundations 78 



X. Personality 

XI. The Foretellable Future 

XII. Universalities . . . . 

XIII. The Voice Victorious . . 

XIV. Every End a New Beginning 
XV. The Amazingness of Reality 

XVI. The Area of Life . . . 

[v] 



91 
105 
109 
116 
133 
141 
163 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVII. The Incognito of the Eternal . 169 

XVIII. Moral Polarity 179 

XIX. Responsiveness 198 

XX. Proportion 203 

XXI. Spontaneity 217 

XXII. Progression 222 

XXIII. The Chimes of Existence . . 235 

XXIV. The Open Gates of Janus . 243 
XXV. Supreme Purposes .... 251 

XXVI. The Mask of Circumstance . 260 

XXVII. Babel 268 

XXVIII. Far Horizons 290 

XXIX. The Uncircumstanced Soul . 304 



[vi] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 



MOODS AND MOTIVES 

SENTIMENT is a citadel that long 
defies all intellectual onslaught; 
what is founded on affection 
stands. Most great social movements 
receive their strength from some emo- 
tion which they awaken or moral prin- 
ciple with which they are allied. 
Instinct and feeling intrench the fun- 
damentals, tradition and art perpetuate 
them; the heart is a natural conserva- 
tive. It is by virtue of their imagina- 
tive resonance that titles continue; the 
ancient seats of the aristocracy are the 
bulwark of the institution. Power 
should always preserve its situs: by 
clinging to Rome the papacy has 
strengthened its spiritual sway. 

[3] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

„ The mind is energized by emotion: 
until the spark of motive ignites it, we 
remain inert. To no bidding but that 
of the heart will the intellect respond; 
whom opposition cannot weaken, dis- 
couragement may wilt. We are but 
latently ourselves till roused ; until emo- 
tionally played upon we do not know 
the grandeur of our music. The fierce 
flame of feeling transmutes thought 
into a new element. 

Sentiment is our normal response to 
facts, and argues the soul's full health; 
but sentimentality is pathological be- 
cause a response to mere fancies. The 
philistinism of the world regards all 
feeling as a weakness, and on develop- 
ing any symptom of it slinks off alone 
like a sick animal. Yet if the mind 
were to follow merely its own sequences, 
it would have no sprightliness or spring. 
Only enthusiasm and love scale heights : 

[4] 



MOODS AND MOTIVES 

the great verities are laid hold of by 
those of strong sentiment. Large 
thought and large love condition each 
other: we mistrust the mind if we sus- 
pect the motive. Men are vouched for 
who have found a friend to trust them, 
a woman to love them. 

The removal of how little earth lib- 
erates its subterranean waters: through 
the emotions we realize our consan- 
guinity. A more lasting bond than 
any agreement of intellects is compati- 
bility of sympathies. Because the re- 
minder is more fundamental and hence 
more frequent, those that touch us on 
the side of our emotional experiences 
are the most vividly remembered. To 
be spiritually akin is to be proof against 
inconstancy ; the cords of the heart bind 
firm. Time can only extend the area 
of companionship for those that have a 
common attitude and responsiveness 

[5] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

toward life; but basic divergences of 
character show the more as circum- 
stances develop them, and increasingly 
lessen the field of intercourse. 

Mood is the imperative ego that 
makes us listen to ourselves. The 
great deep wishes are needs that assert 
themselves. Determinative of what we 
do is the profundity with which we feel 
it. Nothing is accomplished save con 
amove: let the professional begin by 
becoming an amateur. 'While I was 
musing the fire burned: then spake I 
with my tongue.' All large outlines 
of life are sketched by the kindling 
moment of genius; those that labour 
over things that they do not feel like, at 
times when they do not feel like them, 
are merely the lesser men that fill in the 
detail. We must be spiritually self- 
indulgent to be greatly expressive, for 
the only creative condition is mood. 

[6] 



MOODS AND MOTIVES 

The finer-tuned the soul, the more up- 
lifted or prostrated by its moods ; hence 
its greater need — and usually its greater 
power — to control them and to com- 
mand the one found prolific. 

Too much do men subordinate their 
inward requirements to outward exigen- 
cies, thereby submitting the greatness of 
the soul to the littleness of circumstance. 
Our stay should not be regulated by 
the hour, nor our sojourn by the term 
of the lease, but rather by the prof- 
itableness of our thought : the slant not 
of the sun but of our efficiency tells the 
true time of day. Disposition is the 
soul's sex; and the sky of beauty or 
dreariness is spread over every scene 
by the meteorological conditions of 
the heart. If we were always summer 
within, we should not need the tropics 
of luxury. Few modes of life lead to 
our consummation that are not founded 

[7] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

on functional and psychological neces- 
sities rather than on mere external con- 
venience or suitability. 

Timeliness makes everything agree- 
able. Useless is it to coax the un- 
matured day ; so ample in season are all 
things, though out of season so scanty. 
Why demand of time what it does not 
yet contain ? Most unwelcomeness of 
task is due to some anachronism of taste : 
repugnance toward it implies no inher- 
ent lack of merit on its part or relish 
on ours but merely an unreadiness of 
relationship. The gradual rearrange- 
ment effected by time in all relations 
cures every disproportion or distaste; 
we become suited to life less by any 
moral tour de force than by our in- 
evitable change of attitude. Delight 
is born and dies at the creative moment ; 
if the mood-current is cut off, the whole 
mind-system is tied up. Radiant under 

[8] 



MOODS AND MOTIVES 

the sun of enthusiasm, without it the 
world looks gray and forbidding. We 
waste time tacking against antagonism 
when by waiting for the wind of favour 
we might sail so much faster. Con- 
fronted at last by our outlawed duties, 
how amazed we are at the mildness of 
their visage. The perpendicularity of 
heights is deceptive: few ascents are 
so steep but that there is foothold. 
Though a gradual climb doubles the 
distance, it halves the difficulty: the 
short cut of effort pays its penalty of 
fatigue, whereas the winding way of in- 
clination saves many a foolish scramble. 
The season has no need to force its 
flowers: a little patience brings profu- 
sion. Whatever its attempt, untimeli- 
ness butts its head against needless 
walls of obstruction and wades through 
superfluous waters of discouragement 
and hindrance; whereas experience 

[9] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

soon levels all ways and quenches all 
floods and gives us to walk everywhere 
smoothly and dry-shod. 



[10] 



THE IVY OF SIMPLICITY 

NORMAL life needs no incite- 
ments : there must be something 
amiss when conditions require 
sugar-coating. The world is a feast 
to the fresh appetite. Ornament, per- 
fume, jewels, entertainment are so 
many badges of deficit. If we find the 
coffee and cigars of existence indis- 
pensable, we can know little of its real 
gusto. Simplicity is an ivy that pleases 
more by its mere leaf than many- 
flowered luxury. Drilling and dancing 
demand music; without drums and 
fifes, bugles and bunting, we could not 
hold the recruits; but in its natural 
functions and relationships, life is self- 
inviting. 

[11] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

From the commonplace surfaces and 
spheres of existence its glory is re- 
fracted as beautifully as from any 
brilliant of privilege or wealth. Nature 
surrounds even the penniless with a 
magnificence denied to Croesus in his 
habitation of extravagance. A double 
tide sets toward simplicity : the growing 
unsatisfactoriness of the exceptional 
and artificial is joined and augmented 
by a growing interest in the usual and 
natural. Complexity of living consumes 
its whole appropriation in mere cost 
of administration; whereas in simple 
experiences we get full return for life. 
The acquaintances and doings of fash- 
ion force us to turn our back upon our- 
selves: we obtain sustenance only when 
we forsake the banquet. The rich find 
simplicity as restorative as the poor find 
it life-giving. Abstemiousness is the 
consistent sybarite: in the dry crust of 

[12] 



THE IVY OF SIMPLICITY 

existence we find its full deliciousness 
of flavour. One observes in all men of 
experience an increasing simplicity of 
life and democracy of manner. 

The rose of love covers every wall 
on which we train it; whenever fate 
assigns us to any little patch of life, 
how happy are we in our garden. One 
quickly becomes so absorbed in em- 
bellishing his conditions that he loses 
all thought of altering them: women 
embroider every garment of existence. 
Perfection is too large a canvas: we 
cannot handle the huge. Chiefly along 
its delimitation and in its confinements 
lies the charm of the sea. Enjoyment 
like investigation revolts at mass: to 
taste or to test needs only a sip. Mi- 
nutiae have the same composition as 
their multiple and are more easily dis- 
solved on the palate of perception. 
The pleasure of existence grows with 

[13] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

its paucity, hence often with our pov- 
erty. All experiences that rob us of 
our trinkets enrich us; we seldom feel 
like prosecuting the thievery of time. 
Elision gladdens life by simplifying it. 
Men become roomier with every break- 
ing up of the home ; happiness becomes 
ampler when obliged to pack up and 
leave. It is by ridding us of our super- 
fluities that travel gives us back the 
essentials: trunks holding our bare ne- 
cessities are more capacious than a 
whole house. The itinerant alone has 
great possessions and is often wealthier 
than his benefactor. Men of substance 
drown in the oil of their own richness: 
the bars protecting wealth imprison its 
owner. Joy is a gypsy that pines away 
in the captivity of satiety. 

The cheeriness of the local silences 
the call of the distant; by our inertia 
is our restlessness finally overcome. 

[14] 



THE IVY OF SIMPLICITY 

Though the far view may look over and 
beyond the surrounding ugliness, it also 
overlooks and loses the near-by beauty. 
Experience soon sees how surely the 
foreign fades into the familiar, and 
feels thereafter a comparative indiffer- 
ence toward its whereabouts. To be 
conscious that something is amiss is 
no proof that anything else would suit 
us better; wise men recognize in their 
own troubles the symptoms of a uni- 
versal malady. The background of 
life being everywhere alike, a change 
in its foreground little alters the scene. 
We accost few things at their moment 
of fulness: the fruit is seldom plucked 
at perfection; the flowers offered us 
are either buds or blown. Beyond the 
point where the view first pleases, let 
us hesitate how we press on, lest we not 
only fail to enhance but entirely miss it. 
In decisions one generally continues to 

[15] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

wait for more determining data, only to 
find that he must decide on what he had 
all along. Delay of enjoyment endan- 
gers it; once pass its offer by and event- 
ually in a panic of losing it altogether 
we grasp at its mere minimum. We are 
always going to make a ten-strike so 
never make any at all: in waiting for 
the two birds of occasion we lose the 
one stone of opportunity. 

The less our happiness depends on, 
the more certain is its tenure: we en- 
joy the income only of an unquestioned 
fortune. Risk ruins all. Though dan- 
ger may spice the dish, it also deprives 
us of it: we take but a wan pleasure in 
what we think we are about to lose. 
Let us withdraw sentiment into a cita- 
del of safety. There is no satisfaction 
to be derived from anything that is 
out of accord with the general per- 
missiveness of environment or event. 

[16] 



THE IVY OF SIMPLICITY 

Every special bower of bliss is precari- 
ous; except as derived from the com- 
mon lot of mankind, happiness has no 
peace of mind. When we care for the 
unfortunate we insure ourselves; short 
of socialism society cannot feel secure. 
True normalness is to have no quarrel 
with fate, to enjoy fact as such, and to 
look solely to the inalienable incident 
of life for its rewards. Outdated cus- 
toms, reactionary theories, antiquated 
methods keep their adherents in per- 
petual trepidation and unrest. It is 
the only peace to live the truth, the 
only joy to express it. 

In what we are spared consists our 
good fortune more than in the utter- 
most gifts of fate; the greatest bless- 
ings of all go unappreciated except by 
the imaginative few. Only occasion- 
ally on the cessation of some terror or 
torment are one's eyes opened to the 

[17] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

true nature of happiness. Think what 
it is to struggle for the breath that now 
feeds the lungs so easily as to be un- 
conscious; think of the racking pain 
of which these now quiet nerves are 
capable. We who walk level places, 
do we call to mind those who skirt the 
edge of abysses or work suspended 
over sickening heights ? The unprized 
freedom of muscle and limb, how 
would one not ache for it if immured, 
if bound, if clutched by paralysis; 
from what torture of fierce flame or 
biting cold does not every-day temper- 
ature save us. Merely in being as- 
sured of our exemptions, not in ob- 
taining any positive benefaction, lies 
the immeasurable happiness. Grati- 
tude is under no greater obligation than 
for the placid flow of time and the pleas- 
ant and profitable course of thought. 
If we could but realize to what an over- 

[18] 



THE IVY OF SIMPLICITY 

whelming proportion of mankind our 
lot is an object of covetous longing, 
we should be never-ceasingly mindful 
of our advantages instead of deploring 
any we may lack. Men bemoan their 
fate and call Heaven to witness their 
misery, and behold envious eyes are 
fastened upon them the while. 

How savoury comes life to market. 
We get from its fresh produce the odour 
of earth's original spice, and carry 
thence greens of refreshment. The 
natural features of the landscape are 
a mental equivalent for the crowds 
and squares and excitement of cities. 
Health is enough. No pleasure that 
menaces it is comparable to the pleas- 
ure of itself. A brisk step is the gayety 
of life, and quick blood the joy of living. 
There is no material success but health 
and the opportunity to enjoy it. We ask 
rightly, how are you, not how are your 

[19] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

affairs. As the world looks different 
to us when we rise and when we go to 
bed, even such is the difference between 
vigour and the lack of it. But thinly 
does the upholstery of comfort cover 
the hardships of existence — scarcely 
even does it conceal their framework; 
whereas health reclines in the everlast- 
ing arms. 

Civilization has forgotten its ploughed 
ground. Man lives in mere restaurants 
of existence and is clothed ready-made. 
The kitchen, the loom, the threshing- 
floor have been screened from sight. 
We are accustomed to be waited on by 
nature : all supplies appear in response 
to the press-button of demand. Not 
often is attention drawn to original 
processes, and the wood of reality is 
veneered beyond recognition. 

The essentials so few, the superflu- 
ities so many; how little fails us, see- 

[20] 



THE IVY OF SIMPLICITY 

ing the earth and the stars are secure! 
If we did only the healthful, what hap- 
piness; if we did only the important, 
what peace! Moderation spends the 
day solvently and calls on time for 
no advancement. The steady candle 
of life burns with even rim down to 
its socket. There is no way in which 
we can help the world so much as by 
setting up an example of normal, 
moderate living. Let us build our- 
selves around some central court of 
beauty in which our fountain of refresh- 
ment plays, so that men looking in 
through the window of our eyes may 
catch a passing glimpse of it. 



[21] 



THE ARTESIAN SOUL 

CONSCIOUSNESS is a stream 
upon whose surface we see the 
reflection of many things that 
are themselves hidden. The mind pos- 
sesses a knowledge more basic than 
any acquired through the brain ; the 
forms are provided and have but to be 
filled in. We can comprehend only 
what we knew already: education sim- 
ply develops the ideas we bring to it, 
and marshals our innate wisdom. All 
experience is a gradual coming to self- 
consciousness. 

Men cannot tell from the music of 
our lips what is played in our heart. 
Words like icebergs have their massive- 

ness submerged; one's profound im- 

[22] 



THE ARTESIAN SOUL 

pressions He embedded beyond ready 
perception and therefore beyond easy 
expression. Strong principles act si- 
lently; the wise man lives his wisdom, 
the foolish preaches it. All progress 
must make a draft upon the unrealized 
self. We find ourselves but a thresh- 
old and 'look for one who is to come.' 
With closed sense and open thought 
we approach the truth. Our best gifts 
remain gifts, not to be counted on ; the 
goal of genius is ever an Atlantis of 
fortuitous finding set in some western 
sea of unconsciousness and yet un- 
charted. 

Only the surface smarts; the deep 
hurt is hidden. We receive the fatal 
thrust unflinchingly because unknow- 
ingly; we look men quietly in the eye 
while their tongue stabs us in the back. 
Fate serves its process upon us as we 
go about our usual avocations and we 

[23] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

receive suddenly intimations of the 
truth. The world wonders what ails 
us and cannot account for the abrupt 
change that unconsciously comes over 
us; it had not observed the flash that 
opened our eyes and influences the 
whole after-course of our life. Fore- 
bodings respond to an inner sensitive- 
ness as the trembling leaf is the sole 
evidence of the breeze it feels. The 
light touch of some casual word will 
often twang the harp with a tone of 
hope or fear that, unheard of others, 
sounds on through our soul. 

If we would but suppress our little- 
ness, men would ask no further proof 
of our greatness. The rose is faultless 
till it opens. It is only wisdom that 
will not hang itself if given enough 
rope. We lavish affection not so much 
on thqse who deserve it as upon those 
who do nothing to alienate it; hence 

[24] 



THE ARTESIAN SOUL 

the absurd devotion to pets. What 
repute one gains simply by not dis- 
pelling illusions concerning him. 

In the silence of circumstance, the 
essential speaks. Let us pierce to the 
artesian strata of the soul. The flow- 
ing wells of speech spring only from 
the deep basin of experience ; the waters 
must long gather and stand before a 
clear stream of truth emerges. By 
avoiding effusiveness we keep our dig- 
nity intact; reserve stamps us with 
our own value. It is the withheld 
approval for which men strive. State- 
liness, that magnificent poplar, keeps 
its flag of enthusiasm furled and cased ; 
the mountain of majesty overawes be- 
cause seldom unsheathed from the 
cloud-scabbard of the sky. Unless at 
times covered, the peak of favour is not 
appreciated; there are some compli- 
ments that only cheapen their makers. 

[25] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

Graciousness evaporates where it is 
not bestowed restrainedly; what is 
not girt up disgusts. How jealous 
should men be not to dim their lustre! 
We concede any greatness to the great, 
and are pathetically anxious to believe 
all good of those who have once ob- 
tained our credence. Easier is it to 
doubt genius altogether than to doubt 
its boundlessness. What is illustrious 
seems unlimited. 

Thought is a wave that dances for a 
moment in the sunlight and then sub- 
sides again into the ocean of subcon- 
sciousness from which it emerged. If 
men reap only the surface of their mood, 
they gather a quick crop of compla- 
cency; but when they stir the deeper 
soil of disposition, they raise the full har- 
vest of their 'soul. Little should we ever 
know about ourselves unless put to the 
proof of performance. Conduct turns 

[26] 



THE ARTESIAN SOUL 

us inside out and shocks self-content. 
Every unwonted situation reveals in 
us unsuspected weaknesses and faults; 
how often the flash-light of a new ex- 
perience shows us the rocks upon which 
we were drifting. Only through agita- 
tion can one winnow out his chaff. In 
silence and inactivity evil may lurk un- 
noticed, but speech and action bring 
one's flaws into sight. There is no spir- 
itual assurance without self-disclosure. 
Mere potentiality exaggerates itself; 
it is delusion more than boastfulness 
that makes us brag of what we 'could 
do if we would.' Only the attempt 
convinces us of our incompetence; by 
disclosing its disability the effort first 
exposes our shortage. Unconsciousness 
is an ambush. The defect we can still 
notice is not yet dangerous; but what 
eludes detection, eludes correction — the 
undefinable is ineradicable. It is the 

[27] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

unpublished floating debt of some over- 
looked fault that forces us finally to 
bankruptcy. Our sins bring us to book 
not by betraying us, but by insidiously 
limiting our possibilities so that we 
cannot, though within sight of it, enter 
our promised land. Life is a long 
search after what on finding we must 
forego. It is only when we reach out 
for the topmost rung of the ladder of 
success that our subtler failings catch 
us. The chain of limitation is not felt 
till we go its full length. 

Deep influences not only defy analy- 
sis but rarely invite attention: what is 
basic in us is generally beyond con- 
sciousness altogether. Only empiri- 
cally are we from time to time made 
aware how profound a hold persons and 
places have taken upon us. It is when 
the scene has ceased to be scenery that 
it becomes a spiritual background and 

[28] 



THE ARTESIAN SOUL 

a real factor in our lives. Things of 
vital import so change our point of view 
that themselves are unnoticed: every 
great storm shifts the channels of ex- 
perience. 

No man has ever yet pushed to the 
headwaters of his soul or climbed to 
the sources of his inspiration. Our ac- 
quaintance is with our results rather 
than with our modus operandi: im- 
possible is it with the eye to see into 
the eye. Just as we cannot sleep for 
trying to, so by our efforts to incite 
thought we limit it; ideas do not alight, 
because we will not let them. The 
conscious wires get crossed, but the deep 
conduit of subconsciousness carries an 
undissipated current and delivers an 
untampered-with message. Only when 
the passenger travel of self ceases does 
the mind move its freight. 

[29] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

Every great spiritual vitality feeds 
upon some radioactivity of unknown 
energies and properties at the pith of 
its power: the heart worships before 
some hidden holy that may not be un- 
veiled or named. Of this nature are 
the reserve of refinement and the ret- 
icence of strength. It is the charm 
of children that they are still transpa- 
rent to the bottom of their being — like 
all sensitive surfaces the soul in self- 
protection soon veils over. We are 
dumb in the presence of those who 
would draw us out. The attempt to 
make sentiment articulate despoils it: 
by phrasing we exploit and so deplete. 
Let us take up the rich grape of hap- 
piness into our blood and not babble 
it forth in dissipation. In the silent 
memory, things remain green ; but when 
utterance lets in the light of reality, 

[30] 



THE ARTESIAN SOUL 

they instantly wither. The stream of 
influence dries up when we denude 
its source of the forest of unconscious- 
ness surrounding it. 



[31] 



LIFE AT LONG RANGE 

GREAT aims include the lesser as 
an upper road commands a 
lower. By fulfilling ourselves, 
we are most faithful to family and 
country. Humanitarianism is the true 
patriotism: he is the patriot whose life, 
under whatever sky, honours humanity. 
All obligations to our fellow-men are 
implicated in our obligations to our- 
selves, and are therein most effectively 
discharged. If we but strike at once to 
the heart of a problem, its subsidiary 
difficulties vanish. The preliminaries 
are dispensed with by the incidentals. 
When men gain heaven, earth is thrown 
in. Mountain ascents suspend our hill- 
climbing: we do not need to ape men's 

[32] 



LIFE AT LONG RANGE 

acts if we emulate their motives; the 
expedition covers the ground of the 
excursion en route. All large activities 
are timely; but punctuality is an exag- 
geration of the unessential. Results 
we had despaired of come about natu- 
rally when some commanding interest 
marshals them; the muscles are not 
fatigued by a task which would have 
tired them had it not been part of a 
greater achievement. The keystone of 
purpose turns our separately useless 
capacities into an arch of strength. 

Every circumstance of beauty seems 
beatified: the odour of divinity clings 
to its garments. A great act like a 
lovely face justifies and exalts all its 
adjuncts. We suffer any defect in those 
we love. Incidents are swallowed up 
in outcome; when the event is full- 
blown, how empty is the letter-packet 
or newspaper-file. There is little use 

[33] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

for logic outside the court-room of 
analysis: the world wants conclusions 
and cares little for the arguments. 

Amplification answers all questions; 
supplementation supplants all reasons. 
It is neither necessary nor natural for 
fine souls to insist, because they are 
themselves convincing and prejudice 
in favour of the truth. By a word they 
both enliven and are enlivened ; to them 
or from them a mere tone tells. Many 
causes are espoused for their exponents' 
sake, and theories often decided on 
personalities. We reach only what we 
go beyond, and do surpassingly only 
what we ourselves surpass. Effort can- 
not be hooked over the eye of intent ex- 
cept by exceeding it. Proficiency comes 
of easy power. 

We may make port in any wind, 
if we enter on the right tack. All that 
we are loving toward brings us its gift. 

[34] 



LIFE AT LONG RANGE 

Work is an imaginary taskmaster: 
when we try the alternatives, we find 
necessity to be our choice. Obligation 
is but opportunity under another name ; 
the sunlight of love snuffs out the rush- 
light of duty : we may carry our burdens 
without their weight. All things are 
tinged by the purpose with which they 
are pursued; the subjective side of the 
act characterizes it to us. What re- 
sistance made repugnant, willingness 
makes attractive; so ready is relish if 
only opinion permit. Within our con- 
sciousness lies a cure for all unhappi- 
ness; from all injustice reason is a 
refuge. Accepted starvations feed us 
and the unresisted bitter draughts re- 
fresh: even death is recognized as a 
brother when it is unhorsed and un- 
masked. No situation is so bad but 
that there is some precedent to salve 
it; there is always some philosophy 

[35] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

that fits the occasion and brings re- 
lief. 

Misfortune forces us to a more com- 
prehensive truth and thereby glorifies 
the commonplace. The steep hill-sides 
of difficulty lend themselves to beautiful 
treatment better than any evenness of 
ease. How little credit untoward cir- 
cumstances get for all the good they do 
us — making us not only more useful 
to others but also more agreeable to 
ourselves. The luscious pear of char- 
acter ripens best in the drawer of 
obscurity. It is defeat that disciplines, 
victory that perverts: the temperance 
bred of the struggle forgets itself in the 
intoxication of success. Little mishaps, 
by warning, withdraw us from the 
greater: reverses serve as signals of 
recall, keeping us from occupying un- 
tenable positions as well as from fol- 
lowing up a pursuit too far. What- 

[36] 



LIFE AT LONG RANGE 

ever upsets self-satisfaction makes us 
far worthier of it: nations worsted by 
a foreign foe invariably turn to consti- 
tutional changes or administrative bet- 
terment. All attack from without 
hastens reform within. 

There are many ill consequences that 
are good symptoms: weeds are a rec- 
ommendation of the soil and prove the 
possibilities of rich growth. Unless 
having in it a place for failure, no 
philosophy is life-proof. Evil's second 
crop may be good. An opportunity 
is not wholly lost if it teaches us to 
recognize it next time. Of unexpected 
profitableness are the hours we feared 
wasted; our strayings of thought or 
speech contribute to some purpose 
which at the time we had not in view. 
What a discipline to temper is this 
troublesome neighbour; and that dis- 
cursive friend — to what feats of con- 

[37] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

centration does he not force us. 
Within the mind there is a pigeon-hole 
of unassortment, a garret of miscellany, 
filled with experiences that are with- 
out immediate classification or use, for 
which a fitting place, however, is event- 
ually found. Our ideas lie waiting, like 
letters, at a window of general deliv- 
ery, where their expectant relevancies 
will surely call. 

Those that grasp the large intent of 
life find in every incident a meaning 
and a profit; to them, therefore, every- 
thing is worth while and all time well 
occupied. They lay down the pen as 
readily as they take it up, for they see in 
the interruption only a wider inclusion. 
We are never so busy as when every 
feature of existence contributes mate- 
rial: all experience is then a study, 
every place a studio. When we find 
use for the waste of self, we carry con- 

[38] 



LIFE AT LONG RANGE 

servation of energy into the spiritual 
world, and cube life. It were possible 
for a well-arranged schedule of occupa- 
tion to make of every act a means to 
happiness and advancement. The mo- 
notony of manual tasks might be turned 
into a delightful variation from intel- 
lectual labour, if they were reserved and 
undertaken for that purpose; much of 
our brain- work could be kept as a wel- 
come relief to bodily activity and thereby 
cured of the weariness incidental to its 
uninterrupted pursuit. By being led 
athletically, life would become self -re- 
storative, and agreeable in all its walks. 
All things are beautiful either as 
jewel or as foil. The programme of 
every intelligent reform is not to destroy 
but simply to assign to its proper place. 
One recognizes in the great deed or 
beautiful work of art a profitable use 
of something he has himself slighted. 

[39] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

The reason 'all things work together 
for good' to the righteous is that they 
force them to. Things are not so much 
amiss as misplaced; nothing is useless 
except what we misuse. The same rain 
that houses fashion is the fisherman's 
luck. 

Outward inclemency drives to inward 
calm: inside the reef where the sea 
runs is a lagoon of still waters. The 
climate of fortune is beyond control, 
but in the heart a constant tempera- 
ture of happiness may be maintained. 
Dreary surroundings draw from us our 
own ideality. Any uncongenial con- 
ditions or unsympathetic companion- 
ship force us to the development of 
inner resources. It is when the day of 
circumstance is reduced to its darkest 
that we study the stars of intellectual 
vision : when rebuffed, we bring up our 
reserves. Happenings are wholly re- 

[40] 



LIFE AT LONG RANGE 

fractory, and life's only level is found 
in our equableness of mood. As the 
bird delights in buffeting the storm, 
the beast in battling for food, so let us 
exult in the arena of difficulties. 



[41] 



THE WASTEFULNESS OF 
WORRY 

THE misuse of strength sets up cor- 
rectionally a greater demand for 
it ; but its due exercise restores 
at the same time that it fatigues, and 
fills as fast as it empties. Worry takes 
but does not contribute; haste hurries 
no whither but to the grave. Only by 
those that are lusty over them are the 
doughty deeds done; energy is always 
optimistic. How can the sick heart 
exude health, or the soul that itself 
needs cure be curative ? Unless we are 
sunny we do not warm the world. 

What troubles us consumes us; we 
burn without heat, we flame without 
light. When thought drifts upon the 
rocks of anxiety, we cannot float whith- 

[42] 



THE WASTEFULNESS OF WORRY 

er we would to seaward. Ambition is 
no bait for the big fish of character; 
nothing great rises to the fly of reward. 
By exacting too much from ourselves, 
we get not more but less : strain distorts 
normal dimensions. There is no ef- 
fective cure for the harassed and driven 
except in omission; only a willingness 
to forego is capable of poise. The 
day's respite and the night's sleep are 
also Sabbaths which we must remem- 
ber to keep holy. God's gifts do not 
• have to be wrung from Him. What- 
ever our exertions, we can do no more 
than give out the quotum of good that 
is in us: solicitude merely diminishes 
the quantity and dilutes the quality. 
The patient taking of all as it comes, 
without concern other than to derive 
its whole use and enjoyment, produces 
our utmost. Not smiles but an un- 
wrinkled brow betokens happiness. 

[43] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

Speed lashes the sea astern of it, 
fretting roughens it only in front: the 
easier we take things the more we 
accomplish. It is not the pace that 
kills so much as our anxiety to adopt 
or keep it — the nerves, not the mus- 
cles, offend. Reasons for disquietude 
are at best reasons for diligence. True 
progress leaves no track of refuse, but 
a beautiful wake of marbled waters. 
The high-strung are musical; the over- 
strung need tuning. Like a hideous 
straight road, hurry cuts off the very 
curves and corners that constitute the 
charm of living ; highways, on the 
other hand, serving their adjacent 
country undergo as they proceed those 
changes of immediate objective that 
give, both in direction and character, 
a pleasing variety of route. 

Men are in such haste that they 
shorten the very reprieve of time: 

[44] 



THE WASTEFULNESS OF WORRY 

hurry and worry are the veritable dance 
of death. Nothing matters but its 
mattering. Worry causes worse evils 
than it wards off; hurry retards life — 
however much it may hasten the thing 
in hand. Only complacency is efficient 
or safe. Though we are needlessly fear- 
ful, we seldom anticipate the fatality: 
we are not on the bridge when the col- 
lision occurs. Even the over-anxious 
are not exempt — at best they clear 
themselves of contributory negligence. 

It is, after all, the merest fringe of 
difficulties and uncertainties that causes 
us concern, as the smallest customer is 
the most troublesome. Little things 
bother us more than large not only 
because we can do more about them 
but also because attention meets them 
first: the immediate engages us to the 
exclusion of the remote. Upon the 
crisp leaf of detail every soft foot-fall 

[45] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

seems a crushing tread. Though the 
view is still part of our garden, beyond 
the hill is transalpine: even apprehen- 
sion is baffled by blindness. The por- 
tentous proves to be but the beneficial 
rain, while the devastating cyclone gives 
no warning. Like insects we are alert 
to the movement of molecules, yet in- 
attentive to the step of catastrophe: we 
watch the ripples but are heedless of 
the oncoming waves. How self-indul- 
gent is man, how solicitous that con- 
ditions should suit all his little sensibili- 
ties! yet acting upon him from every 
side are universal forces and influences 
that have no regard whatever for his per- 
sonal preferences. Futile in the face of 
life's great movements and lifting tides 
are our pygmy calculations and precau- 
tions. What the petty cash of worri- 
someness saves is swallowed up in the 
crash of fate; what trustfulness loses is 

[46] 



THE WASTEFULNESS OF WORRY 

made good by the larger increments of 
existence. 

So puny is haste that it is only petty 
things to which we apply it — the big 
are plainly beyond its reach and there- 
fore beyond its blight. Men with most 
reason for worry least exhibit any, 
since the very exigencies that would ex- 
cuse it are so grave as to require its 
excision. Though art is long, it is 
less flurried by the sense that time is 
fleeting: it evokes from the mind its 
eternal qualities. The moment seems 
imperious where the trifling event 
seethes ; but great events grant latitude 
of opportunity. We have only to act 
as if we had plenty of time, to have 
it. Eternity belongs to the eternally- 
minded. 



[47] 



THE CREST OF INTENSITY 

EXCESS is a universal restorative: 
extremes encounter a natural 
check from which they recoil. 
When faults become flagrant, their cor- 
rection is not far; there is hope when 
the injustice is glaring. Troubles keep 
gathering until some lightning-stroke 
of accentuation precipitates their poig- 
nancy and dread, thereby clarifying 
again the sky of our serenity. Vehe- 
mence is only the more quickly con- 
verted, and never fails to chide itself 
for unfairness. The redudio ad ah- 
surdum is an ever-cogent argument. 
It is only inexperience that is con- 
vinced at the top and doubtful at the 

bottom. At the maximum and mini- 
Ms] 



THE CREST OF INTENSITY 

mum of apparent potentiality the turn- 
ing-point is reached: let us look for 
reversal whenever long continuance has 
eliminated all sceptics. The longer we 
wait the less reason have we for losing 
hope. Perseverance is a level unbroken 
by the ups and downs of incident or the 
unevenness of judgment. The salve 
of events is the recognition of their 
temporary character. 

Every crest of eagerness curls over 
into a hollow of aversion. Exagger- 
ation resents itself and for recupera- 
tion seeks its antipodes. As love to 
hate, so relish turns to disgust. It is 
proverbial that we cry before evening 
if we begin the day laughing: both 
because it over-anticipates and because 
it nervously reacts, elation subsides into 
depression. There is no cause for 
wonder in the antitheses of experience, 
when once we realize the sequential 

[49] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

character of the relationship. How 
many pencil-points of purpose are bro- 
ken by over-sharpening. The clear- 
est vision is quickest clouded; by the 
slightest use is the keen edge turned. 
Every western coast of extremity con- 
fronts already the east of its opposite: 
the fool and the hero are closely akin; 
brilliance ever invites eclipse. From 
the countryside the clouds, from the 
city the smoke, rise and obscure the 
sun. Delicate adjustments suffer con- 
stant derangement; the glassy surface 
of peace may be shattered by a breath. 
In self-defence and self-disguise fine- 
ness recoils and roughens itself: it is 
always the fairest day that freckles and 
under a veil of mist conceals the deli- 
cacy of its complexion. 

We can go but a little way in our 
own direction without being lost to 
sight and unable longer to communi- 

[50] 



THE CREST OF INTENSITY 

cate our whereabouts to others. It 
is the tragedy of all sensitiveness and 
genius that they may no more fraternize 
with their fellows or receive the gen- 
eral support of existence. Food is with 
difficulty brought us in the trenches. 
All pursuits pushed too far leave us in 
an exposed position; there is risk of 
despair when we are cut off from the 
main body of mankind. Men of one 
idea become devoid of area: the pulse 
of the scholar slackens; the outlook of 
the business man contracts. All spe- 
cialism is a spoliation and rifles the 
treasury of existence: it enriches pur- 
pose at the expense of the heart — the 
soul is left juiceless and joyless. 

Excess is never relevant in dis- 
proof of moderation. Coveted summer 
proves too cordial, the welcome winter 
too acute. All that is pressed to pleas- 
ure changes its character. Not long 

[51] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

can the languor of inaction dispense 
with the habitations of liveliness; the 
starved ear of silence craves again the 
metropolis of sound. Upon every one- 
sidedness of occupation or interest, fa- 
tigue itself enforces a limitation: men 
are often driven into broadening and 
humanizing themselves in sheer relief 
and for diversion. Under the open 
sky of existence we are happy the live- 
long day: some excessive ardour of in- 
terest or act is it that overcasts our joy. 
How few are the lives in which the 
clouds of invalidism do not arise and 
eclipse the sun of strength before its 
natural setting. 



[52] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

THROUGH the archway of lofty 
thought the world is nobly 
framed. The general aspect in- 
jects interest into everything: nothing 
is small that plays its part. Truth if 
folded is not perspicuous; but when 
spread large, each feature of it falls 
into place as a meaningful factor. A 
wide word wakens attention and enlists 
the heart. No fact is unimportant that 
reiterates an essential truth, no activ- 
ity belittling unless it limits the mind. 
Wherever we open life up, we open it 
out; one has only to go a little further 
to find an outlet for every ill. Though 
for much there may seem to be no 
immediate relief save in forgetfulness, 

[53] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

yet the supplementation effected by ex- 
perience always brings eventual relief 
through subordination — which is itself 
a kind of forgetfulness. Life does not 
give us its big answers unless we ask 
it its big questions. With the elabora- 
tion of our branching, our roots strike 
more firmly into the soil; thought 
founds itself deeper and deeper as its 
rising superstructure requires. None 
but the stably-poised can support the 
burden of height. 

Experience presents itself in detail 
but explains itself in summation: the 
day-book of incident requires frequent 
posting up into the ledger of compre- 
hensiveness. Realism if consistent has 
no consistency and therefore conveys 
no meaning; for all entries seem trivial 
till footed up, balanced and carried 
forward. Though facts are common 
to all, the sense of their comparative 

[54] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

value is individual: it is over the same 
data that men disagree. Conclusions 
go astray not so much because of de- 
fect in mental process as because atten- 
tion assembles the ingredients of expe- 
rience too partially: emphasis keeps 
too close to self. In thought as in ac- 
tion we need the breadth cure. The 
sunlight unravels the snarls of worry, 
and perplexities of prose find their clew 
of egress in the poetic word. All final 
solutions come of consulting basic needs 
and disregarding superficial objections. 
A wide sense of the appropriate is a 
wiser judge than any nice calculation 
of requirement. Incident and occasion 
are the sole variants — principles are 
permanent and of universal applica- 
tion. Only plans or decisions made 
in consonance with underlying causes 
and tendencies, and with reference to 
far eventualities rather than to fluctu- 

[55] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

ations of immediate advantage or dis- 
advantage, prove happy of outcome. 
Fundamentals show the trend, appear- 
ances only its rate of speed. It is good 
to realize that God speaks to us in the 
out-doors of a large spirituality rather 
than in the dark-room of our pettiness; 
that it is to the pleasant spots we must 
go to meet Him; that we get further by 
following hope than by heeding fear. 

The concrete is limited both in sug- 
gestiveness and in appeal, but the 
abstract has a world-wide currency. 
Those who think, see truth in its naked- 
ness and not merely in its incidental 
dress. We lose sense of direction amid 
the rank growth of locality and must 
seek the stranger's point of view for 
orientation. Any idiom of mind or 
speech or manner evinces a lack of 
universal touch; the great give no hint 
of their century or race. Detail pitches 

[56] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

its voice in a local key and talks pro- 
vincially; but to phrase generally is 
to address mankind and to couch in 
eternal tones that die not down at the 
ear. Only large thought is inclusive 
and therefore conciliatory, keeping us 
free from the contentious tyranny of the 
lesser. Where creeds remain catholic 
schism sets up no rivalry; but when 
outworn, they send their children forth 
in search of shelter and momentarily 
make faith itself an outcast. 

Let us not gather life with too short 
a stem. To limit the field of energy 
is to limit our possibilities in that field : 
the farm of the mind must exceed in 
extent the acre it tills. No man is 
anything unless he is much more. Ex- 
clusiveness of attention reacts upon its 
fruitfulness ; all over-concentration is 
barren. The specialist is guilty of a 
species of vivisection, and can never 

[57] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

restore the live palpitating incidents of 
truth but at best can cauterize its bleed- 
ing incisions. Technicalities tend to 
blind; the small cloud on the horizon 
that will overspread and change the 
entire sky is not often visible to the va- 
ticination of the experts. With greater 
frequency should focussed eyes look up 
to the far view. Any over-eagerness of 
pursuit bends the body and stoops the 
soul: to keep mentally erect requires a 
noble disengagedness of purpose. We 
would grow as straight as the trees did 
we seek like them the sun. Too spe- 
cific an object defeats the dream and 
lowers the flight. Because mistaking 
itself for far-sight, the near-sight of the 
learned is the more incurable ; none are 
so shallow as the deep if they think they 
have fathomed it all. Special compe- 
tency is enlarged most by general ex- 
perience; only wide observation can 

[58] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

apply aptly. Once we can make the 
batter, we are secret to all the recipes. 

Off the coasts of life we see its con- 
tour : problems if looked at impersonally 
are easier to solve. What is detached 
avoids the roll and pitch of the ship's 
motion and preserves its own steadi- 
ness. How few men think of things 
beyond the shore of their own share in 
them. Night is but an averted sphere, 
shadow our interception of the sun. 
The universe is eternally clear: there 
are no clouds beyond the earth's mi- 
asma. Fears prove to be specks upon 
the window of sight. To infuse little 
life with large thought, this is to philos- 
ophize, poetize, dramatize it. Outlook 
exclaims; extrication always shouts, 
The sea, the sea! 

According to the intelligence that ac- 
costs it is the meaning of the world. 
The universe, like the heaven-dropped 

[59] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

sheet containing all things, is let down 
before us and insight is the voice that 
forbids man to call anything common. 
To every commonplace specimen the 
botany of perception lends the partici- 
patory interest of its wider classifica- 
tion and relationship. How many eyes 
besides our own look out upon the 
scene — birds, beasts, reptiles, insects; 
yet all of them to so little effect save 
solely the eye of understanding. Tin- 
tern Abbey, theme of the poet's song, 
aesthetic utterance of religion, goal of 
secular pilgrimage — is yet to the vine 
nothing but a wall to climb on, to the 
red-breasted wren a perch, to the wind 
a whistle, to the feeding sheep but a 
shadow and a shelter. 

A right point of view is the grip 
on life. Merely to behold truth and 
beauty is a joy far exceeding success in 
any partial occupation. We are spirit- 

[60] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

ual beings and are tired not by spent 
muscles but by low moods. Inertia is 
due to discouragement more often than 
to laziness: it is lack of energy rather 
than lack of strength that makes us 
droop. We are restored philosophically 
to physical health. I am cured of life 
every time I am sick. Of troubles is 
born tranquillity. 

Over areas of expanse the air comes 
large: the fullest life is the freshest. 
The soul's view is the mind's ventila- 
tion — no thought unless happy can be 
healthy. Philosophy depends for its 
value upon the experience it sum- 
marizes; every true word boxes the 
compass of the universe. We prize the 
opinion of certain persons not so much 
for its own sake as for the sake of the 
wider body of opinion it reflects. Un- 
til the mind makes the grand tour it 
is not considerable. Breadth like the 

[61] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

breeze is the kiss of distance and brings 
from the hygienic tracts of nature the 
salutary touch. Through the air's own 
urgence the balm of sea and forest is 
spread abroad. Let us oxygenate life 
with leisure; there must be many small 
parks of occasion in its congested dis- 
tricts of complexity. By the passive 
mood the active is re-enforced: we 
march further for the halt. Every 
holiday heightens hope and stimulates 
industry. 

Material life is shot through with 
spiritualization. When functions have 
once acquired a spiritual counterpart 
they are no longer purely physical; 
with consciousness love ceased to be 
sensual. The body's best regimen is 
provided by the mind's hygiene; our 
daily bread does not nourish unless re- 
ceived to high purpose. There is no 
vital factor of experience that does not 

[62] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

nerve us to some apparently unrelated 
effort. From mere pastime we get no 
pleasure, nor from indulgence profit; 
fiction is frivolous if it simply amuses. 
Only furtherance justifies. Not in spe- 
cial acts but in a changed attitude 
toward ordinary acts dwells goodness. 
The sanctuary is wherever life is led 
to a divine accompaniment. Thanks 
at meals are a continual mass; 'do 
this as oft as ye shall drink it in re- 
membrance of me.' 

It is the province of religion to see 
the little in its largest relations; there 
is no means of standardizing one's 
self but through contemplation of the 
total content of existence, and of self 
with reference thereto — through consid- 
eration of what the divine mind would 
be or do if it operated at the particular 
point of the whole scheme of things 
represented by one's self. Employing 

[63] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

a psychologically approbable method, 
the church service distributes atten- 
tion over the whole range of experience, 
applying general principles to every con- 
ceivable situation or difficulty and thus 
bringing the soul into harmony with 
goodness in all its forms and manifes- 
tations. If the real nature of religion 
were not misunderstood, there would be 
less rancour in its disputes; through- 
out all such discussions its fundamental 
values because unchallenged remain un- 
changed. On the subjective side, not 
on the objective, is the touch: for be- 
ing interpreted in terms of spirituality, 
God is not less God but more. Faith 
is no cosmic theory but a conscious 
intimacy — a philosophy and practice 
of divine relationship. It assumes the 
attitude and speaks the language not 
of a separate and ephemeral creature, 
but of a participant and therefore 

[64] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

eternal being. Conceiving God as im- 
minent, it believes in a spiritual one- 
ness and continuity rather than in a 
heaven and a hereafter: it has no need 
to explain death away, for its belief in 
spiritual eternity is built on perception 
of the character of this life rather than 
on expectation of another. It main- 
tains that the inner vision is a guaran- 
tee of the soul's permanence: as even 
a short walk shows a thousand others 
worth taking, so a full life evinces the 
need of eternity for its completion. 
Great souls believe because they feel 
their immortality. The mind in its 
vigour refuses a philosophy of self- 
stultification. 

There will always speak to and 
through us whatever we heed: to be 
greatly receptive and perceptive is the 
best natural endowment and consti- 
tutes inborn genius. Intelligent co- 

[65] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

operation with large forces makes us 
more efficient than the utmost enlarge- 
ment of our own. Only small aims 
take shelter; great aims keep them- 
selves out in the winds and currents, 
where they are fostered and furthered. 
Whenever fate unclasps our arms from 
small objects, we embrace worthier 
ones. Facts obscure events. Let us 
lift things into their widest relationship 
and name them as we do our children 
after some illustrious kinsman. The 
south window, the morning room, the 
sunset seat, the eastward chancel of 
churches — such associations keep the 
thought in transcendent touch and give 
distinction to the mood. We dignify 
life by making it full-sized. Why not 
frequent only such places and engage 
only in such occupations as are of wide 
suggestion; seek in the voices of the 
great the echoes of infinity; bare our- 

[66] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

selves to be played on only by some 
sweeping touch and withdraw ourselves 
from the petty ringers ? Lord, I spread 
out myself like a plain before thee and 
ask that thy sun and storms both warm 
and temper me — thy winds clear the 
air of my spirit, thy sunshine evoke 
the clouds of my homage. 

All days of commemoration are days 
of expansion, and correspond — though 
they may not always coincide — with 
the soul's need of self-recollection; an- 
niversaries of notable men rally in us 
the trait to which their career gave 
emphasis. Holidays and holy days are 
no mere memorials but indispensable 
opportunities for one's own fulfilment: 
the soul avails itself of every outward 
occasion for utterance. Worthy com- 
memoration does not look backward 
to a waning vista but forward to an 
approaching consummation. To dwell 

[67] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

in memory shows that we have lost 
our hold on hope. We honour the 
past more by augmenting than by re- 
membering it; reverence both kneels 
and looks up. Better is it to hail the 
light in its fulness than in the dim- 
ness of its reflection, to enjoy life in 
its beauty than merely in its beati- 
fication. We are the greater Greeks 
and look out upon a larger world with 
fuller sight. For us the Hesperides are 
unsphered and our unknown seas are 
those of outer space. The Pillars of 
Hercules have moved westward till they 
are become the very gates of the East; 
and the shoulders of Atlas have broad- 
ened to bear the weight of a whole 
universe. 

The broad outward tide of sympathy 
returns with an uplifting inward tide of 
experience. To see all is the only way 
to perceive either our place or our use- 

[68] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

fulness in it., Many a purpose is en- 
heartened, many a thought made agile 
by a new appreciation of its pertinency. 
The whole is no harder than the part, 
and tires less because it means more. 
Only full information can pick the fit- 
ting; in the mere attempt not to act 
foolishly we become experts. A true 
sense of proportion is not given us until 
imagination cuts loose from the accus- 
tomed — from locality, profession, circle, 
cult, age: wherever the pressure of con- 
vention is taken off, the well-spring of 
individuality gushes up. None but un- 
trammelled eyes may see things dis- 
interestedly and as they really are, 
instead of relatively to some personal 
end. Contacts or ties of any kind 
are fetters upon the mind's freedom: 
men that conceive life in its large 
relations feel constrained in any par- 
ticular or special relationship. All rel- 

[69] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

ativities must be melted in the pot of 
truth. Partiality is ever a disqualified 
judge: if it play a prosecuting or pu- 
nitive part, justice is never free from 
suspicion; to leave administration in 
partisan hands is never safe. Men 
that argue the right side are known 
by their quiet reliance on reason; but 
bitterness is a sure badge of misgiving. 
The truth is calm with its inevita- 
bility. 

No one can exercise circumspection 
without being rewarded by the discov- 
ery of something to better or to omit; 
revision proves a very Siegfried of res- 
cue to some slumbering Brunhilde of 
our unconsciousness. When at length 
we see our deficiencies, we marvel that 
others can ever have had faith in us; 
scarcely can we then understand their 
long tolerance of our faults. Would 
we know the truth about ourselves, 

[70] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

let us simply stand aside and regard 
our vacant desk, our doffed clothes, 
our interrupted task, the habitation 
of our former sojourn. How much 
smaller looks the lot when the structure 
is down. Death comes like a day of 
departure when we go forth and gaze 
back with strange and disillusioned 
eyes upon the city in which we have 
so long dwelt. 

Life is offered us in full, but ill- 
health and narrowness halve the sum 
we receive. It is a population of frac- 
tions. Physical disorders and psychi- 
cal twilight reduce our day to dimness. 
The natural trend of existence is tow- 
ard truth and health — among all the 
ills Jesus suffered, bodily ailment is 
never mentioned; it is only our mis- 
application of its forces that reverses 
its direction. Not our limitations but 

our own smallness keeps us petty instead 

[ 71 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

of public-spirited, politicians instead of 
statesmen, sceptics and scoffers instead 
of seers and enthusiasts. How opulent 
are those that invite life's full response 
and receive their whole income of joy. 
We waste ourselves among the foot-hills 
and never reach the mountains. Mere 
technicalities of sense-procedure long 
cut us out of our rightful inheritance of 
happiness. By exacting the little com- 
pensations we forfeit the large gifts: it 
is loss of the more that damns the 
less. The great are simply those that 
are not moved by small motives. We 
die like the pines at our lower branches, 
when like them we live at the top. 

Experience is the behaviour of the 
soul under exposure to the universe : all 
events are reducible to this one event 
that gives them meaning, namely: the 
action of humanity in sense-contact 
with the material world, in spiritual 

[72] 



THE DIGNITY OF EXISTENCE 

contact with God. Moving along the 
resultant line of these two influences, 
man traces the contour of individual 
life and the profile of history. Whoso 
spans a generation, views the viaduct 
of the ages. 



[73] 



THE CRESCENDO OF 
MEANING 

INSIGHT is the dulcet piper that 
charms out the children of the 
heart into a land of loveliness. 
With magic touch it rifts objectivity 
and opens vistas of inner meaning that 
fulfil our early dreams. Facts keep un- 
folding, curtains are constantly drawn 
aside and verities that transcend all ex- 
pectation are unveiled. The enlarge- 
ment of life is incredible. 

Under the lensed eye all things ex- 
pand and grow beautiful. Reality, 
when studied, suffers first contraction 
and then dilation: though analysis for- 
feits the initial spell, it discovers a 
deeper. The prism of investigation 

[74] 



THE CRESCENDO OF MEANING 

refracts all white light of fact into its 
tricolour glory. Every experience keeps 
its best wine until the last: no hopes 
but in their own way come true. We 
live a continual paradise regained. 
What satiety stole, simplicity restores; 
what knowledge lost, wisdom recovers. 
Faith survives every shock and domi- 
nates every finale. The raking of our 
forts only leads to fortification of the 
impregnable heights; God is still 'eine 
feste Burg.' Our philosophy can al- 
ways withdraw itself to a position in 
which it is unassailable. The quaking 
of earth never drives man away but 
merely to better construction. 

All deep thought strikes the great 
common subflow of beauty: existence 
is 'the king's daughter all glorious 
within.' Wherever perception probes 
it becomes ecstatic. One cannot speak 
indisputably without speaking majesti- 

[75] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

cally. The great aesthetic enthusiasms 
are not grafted on — they grow from the 
root of reality. Oratory lends itself 
only to truth, never to a mere cause. 
Some new phoenix of imagination soars 
from every mental conflagration; phi- 
losophy finds no final expression of 
itself save in poetry. 

Credence is the widow's cruse. Mis- 
trust and contempt are doubtful ad- 
ditions to efficiency, and despondency 
is but a door drearily creaking in the 
wind; whereas devotion to what we 
have doubles it. The thoughts we re- 
flect upon open up into an ever-ex- 
panding context; every self-interview 
becomes a fresh intimacy with truth. 
Perception turns all it touches to gold 
and raises action to its last potency 
of possibility. If any side of life seem 
shallow or stagnant, the fault is in 
our way of looking at it : the morning 

[76] 



THE CRESCENDO OF MEANING 

is inspired, the evening cheerful, only 
noon has still to struggle against spirit- 
ual negation. Nothing is more exhil- 
arating than to have matters of former 
indifference or distaste become full of 
interest and delight. There are no 
tracts of ignorance or obnoxiousness 
that may not yet yield us our finest 
fruits of joy. Under a musical pres- 
entation threadbare thoughts receive 
a renewed freshness and words expand 
to a fulness from which they never 
recede. 

Timely construction cures the archaic 
text. Christ abrogated few of the func- 
tions which he found, but filled them 
with wider import and ampler life. 
Even in correcting, insight confirms : it 
never lessens meanings but always en- 
larges them. All constitutions and 
religions liberalize themselves in the 
reading. 

[77] 



THE FIRMNESS OF FOUNDA- 
TIONS 

HE that states a reason makes a 
convert and wins a friend. 
All demands are exacting till 
we see their intent: we become recon- 
ciled to most orthodox ways by under- 
standing them. Not in multiplying 
experiences, but in gaining knowledge 
concerning them lies progress. Each 
day adds new explanations and justifi- 
cations of old facts. Over the entire 
field of life its rationale is arriving just 
in time to seize from the failing grasp 
of formalism the falling standards of 
faith and to raise them again aloft. 

Few moral secessions live. Whatever 
aspect conditions assume, we chafe un- 

[78] 



THE FIRMNESS OF FOUNDATIONS 

der them: if they compel, it is bond- 
age; if they prevent, it is exile; if they 
offer a choice, it is a quandary. We 
would lay the blame outwardly, but 
are sobered by finding the trouble 
in ourselves. The force majeure of 
things quickly puts down our upstart 
rebellions against them and by making 
us converts to their reasonableness 
keeps us ever thereafter loyal subjects 
of their regime. Our contentiousness 
is as our youth, for the superfluousness 
of quarrel is soon apparent. Life is a 
fight that is won by the peace-loving. 
Seeing that all forces quickly spend 
themselves, how foolish is fanatical op- 
position. Most dawns are turbulent, 
but the wind dies down with the day, 
and the evening is at peace. By one 
discipline or another are we all broken 
at last to life and brought to the same 
philosophy. 

[79] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

Foundations are deeper than the 
reformer imagined and therefore both 
more unsubvertible and more just. 
The forces of support as well as of over- 
throw gather around the long-enduring ; 
if investigation shows the futility of 
event, it shows also its necessity. The 
accustomed and familiar always seem 
easy to dispense with, yet if foregone 
it is exactly these that are most 
missed. In whatever direction we try 
out the wings of our liberty, we are 
glad of return. Freedom to roam so 
accentuates self as to weary us of it; 
men to whom every avenue of choice is 
open crave some determining neces- 
sity. We forfeit the substantial satis- 
factions by insisting on whims; if we 
rid ourselves of little limitations, we 
are likely thereby to incur larger ones. 
Long misunderstood and misinterpreted 
acts are approved at last by our be- 

[80] 



THE FIRMNESS OF FOUNDATIONS 

la ted wisdom: our elders are gone by 
the time we reach them. Let us not 
leave our tribute to be graven on the 
grave. It is the fate of most experience 
to be learned too late or applied too 
late. But insight like all earlier pos- 
session reaps the reward of timeliness. 
Permanence is often more productive 
than improvement: the cumulative ivy 
clings only to the stone of stability. 
There are many commendable accom- 
plishments that will not compensate 
for the loss of time in their acquire- 
ment. It is not necessary that things 
should be the best in order to be the 
best for us: familiar methods, though 
defective, may well be more advan- 
tageous than restrictive ones. Any 
straining or constraint costs us the 
effectiveness of ease: our cleverness 
undoes us with our audience. As soon 
as independence becomes conspicuous 

[81] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

it becomes a handicap, for any con- 
sciousness of appearances prevents the 
free movement of the mind. No posi- 
tion is tenable that wastes itself in self- 
defence. Petty economies squander 
more time than they save money. It 
takes a large stake to make litigation 
profitable. A greater distraction often 
than any we avoid is the effort of its 
avoidance and the sense of the hostility 
thereby incurred. The ruts into which 
we fall are no accidental route, but the 
repeated vote of activity and the unan- 
imous resolution of thought. Every 
change, even a beneficial one, takes 
our breath away, for it involves some 
loss upon which we had not counted. 
Dangerous to separate are the wheat 
and tares of idiosyncrasy; we may 
jeopardize our quintessential qualities 
by uprooting peculiarities. The exci- 
sion of deep-seated ills is a heroic 

[82] 



THE FIRMNESS OF FOUNDATIONS 

remedy and one likely to prove fatal 
to welfare. 

The universe cautions but does not 
coerce; it punishes but does not pre- 
vent. It has apparently resolved that 
freedom shall shape itself and restraint 
be self-imposed. And what such com- 
pulsion as reason ? Where it fails in 
imperative it gains in suasion. Most 
things are as they had to be, and there- 
fore once for all. One and the same 
throughout all ages are the bases of 
being; the channels of existence have 
not greatly shifted since the beginning 
of time. The old ways because the nat- 
ural ways survive every innovation to 
which it was expected they would suc- 
cumb. Few are the customs or usages 
that fancy does not some day revive; 
the old-fashioned always enjoys an 
Indian-summer of favour. We mistake 
the froth of change for a new surface 

[83] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

till we find there is no substance be- 
neath. The radical becomes both dis- 
illusioned as to his dream and reas- 
sured as to reality. If energy disdains 
precedent, it sacrifices some of its effi- 
ciency; except from the high table-land 
of experience, individuality should not 
peak itself. The merits of civilization 
are not fully apparent until we push 
primal instincts and needs to extrem- 
ity. To-day's strength is staggered at 
the accumulations incidental to the mere 
ease and leisure of the centuries; and 
the toil and agony that have gone into 
their spiritual creations — who but the 
creative can comprehend ? Incalcula- 
ble is the vested capital of time. An- 
archism, like other anachronisms, is 
but the remonstrance of the waves to 
the shore; for to the sea-level all ele- 
vation is an object of envy. 

Sooner or later compromise cuts the 

[84] 



THE FIRMNESS OF FOUNDATIONS 

locks of every Samson. There is al- 
ways an element of ignorance about 
what we immoderately hate or love — 
hate being blinder than love because 
it overlooks whereas love only looks 
away. Fuller experience neutralizes 
both extremes and imbues us with sub- 
dued mixed feelings. The precipitate 
choices of enthusiasm seldom wear 
well: only what is never wholly in 
place is never wholly out of place. It 
is better that friends, as well as articles 
of general necessity, should be pass- 
ably suitable to all occasions rather 
than perfectly but at the same time 
exclusively so to one. Most hasty pur- 
chases, snap judgments, acquaintances 
du voyage, sudden marriages develop 
later some feature of undesirability. It 
is usually the bitter fate of brilliant 
qualifications to find themselves passed 
over in favour of mediocre but all-round 

[85] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

capacity; the dark horse is always a 
moderate. 

No new up-building can cut off the 
ancient lights of faith. Progress, what- 
ever its innovation, respects the ease- 
ments of the soul : the spiritual view is 
inviolable. Life smiles upon any front 
reason presents, and festoons it with 
garlands of love. Poetry is a perennial : 
the flowers of fantasy spring up around 
every fact and embower every form of 
truth. Whatever dynasty reigns, the 
pomps, the glory, the dignities go on; 
though we destroy the structure's funda- 
ment, let us preserve its ornament, for 
this will still be needed in the new. No 
religion has neglected to call in to its 
aid the essential sanctities of nature: 
the scene, the sky, the season offer an 
alliance that none dare reject. All 
Easters or harvest-homes have an au- 
tochthony of meaning that antedates 

[86] 



THE FIRMNESS OF FOUNDATIONS 

any theology, making them festivals in 
their own right. Religious devotion 
whencesoever originating draws from 
the same springs : the sanities and beau- 
ties of existence respond to and corrobo- 
rate every sincere faith. There is noth- 
ing potent in any form of worship but 
it becomes the heritage of its successors. 
Needlessly has liberal Christianity im- 
poverished itself by rejecting all the 
traditions of the historic churches. The 
romance and poetry that have grown 
up within and around the cult of Rome 
are — to a large extent — pertinent to no 
particular creed but are the universal 
possession of Christendom. 

Inconsistencies and contradictions 
soon cease to disconcert us, or even 
to put us to our election; we calmly 
posit some inclusive truth that recon- 
ciles them. To supplement is always 
to solve. Truths that seem to clash, 

[87] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

really only eclipse each other: every 
stellar verity has its own orbit, and 
the universe contains all without in- 
terference. Principles are often philo- 
sophically consistent though conflicting 
in application, like ships that collide at 
the harbour mouth though at sea giving 
each other a wide berth. Of so many 
selves are we composed that no in- 
congruity of speech or conduct con- 
victs us of insincerity; every new con- 
tact calls upon us for the emphasis of 
some different phase of disposition — 
causing us without hypocrisy to adapt 
our manner to the occasion. We are 
potentially any personality that we 
vividly picture; and incipiently feel the 
sentiment that seems suitable. 

Truth quarrels with itself only be- 
cause subdivided: contention is gen- 
erally but the confrontation of its parts. 
The solution of most altercations is not 

[88] 



THE FIRMNESS OF FOUNDATIONS 

ouster but cotenancy: by addition not 
by subtraction we amplify truth and 
make it total. There is no reason why 
argument should lead to a wrangle of 
words, but at most to a new angle of 
vision; antagonism issues usually in 
some newly-qualified assertion. No 
contradiction can be permanent — or if 
permanent real. We cripple conclusion 
whenever for the sake of clearness we 
reject data: always to stay where we 
can see bottom keeps us in shallow 
waters. The inclusive view cannot be 
composed otherwise than of detached 
glimpses from manifold points: what 
philosophy gains in consistency it is 
wont to suffer in comprehensiveness. 
How long must not thought be 
ploughed and harrowed by experience 
before ready for grading and seeding 
and setting out into the fair, smooth 
lawn of system. 

[89] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

The world seems incoherent; yet all 
its phenomena spring from one and the 
same underlying cause and conduce to 
one and the same general effect. The 
marvel of the universe as of the 
metropolis is multitude moving to indi- 
vidual ends without confusion. Think 
of the infinite division and minutise of 
existence as it is to-day, and of the in- 
conceivable mass and variety of it that 
have already sunk into the abyss of the 
past — and yet that myriad ramification 
is all contained in the mind whose de- 
velopment it is. Nature is but the 
manifold material differentiation and 
the spiritual reunification of the one 
substance: characteristic of all great 
creation is it that identity of origin 
insures unity in result. 



[90] 



PERSONALITY 

ACTION is not self-analytic. The 
fruit lies in the sap and juices 
and has to come out. It is 
only when a man flowers that the world 
botanizes him. We cannot help our 
fundamental traits nor their efflores- 
cence; ability has but to live to be. 
How foolish our solicitude for self-ef- 
fectuation: nothing else is possible. 
One cannot move without showing his 
mettle. Discouragement merely evinces 
ignorance of the world's modus ope- 
randi; impatience is the inexperience 
of expectation. 

Capacity guarantees itself: what we 
can do, we must do, for qualification 
is urgent and captained by unquench- 

[91] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

able wish. We are furthermore pledged 
to our idiosyncratic methods and pur- 
poses; nothing can stir our fancy and 
evoke our utterance save in the guise 
that pleases us. Unless satisfied to be 
what we are we take leave of happiness 
from the outset. Involved in one's point 
of view are both his individuality and 
his style: under the persistent lapping 
of one's waves the shores of circum- 
stance cannot but conform to his con- 
tour. The opportuneness of the great is 
not, on its subjective side, the accident it 
sometimes seems to be. If we remem- 
bered the inevitableness of genius we 
should cease to be surprised at the 
sustained loftiness of its effort or the 
sure recurrence of its inspiration. 

Though the topic of experience is for- 
tuitous, the treatment of it is our own. 
Life is a stray, random walk that brings 
us out we know not in advance where, 

[92] 



PERSONALITY 

nor does it much matter. Qualifica- 
tions attract to themselves the condi- 
tions for their exercise; men gravitate 
toward the persons and situations that 
suit or need them not so much by inten- 
tion as by the indirect working of un- 
conscious predilections. Facing a de- 
sign which somewhere, somehow, has 
been placed before his eyes, man works 
it into the details of his life, thereby 
fashioning fate to himself. There is 
among purposes little precedence of im- 
portance except such as a superficial rel- 
ativity may give them. As long as en- 
ergy revolves smoothly in some orbit of 
activity round ourselves, small differ- 
ence which or at what radius. A 
change of occupation is but a new play 
in which the same actors of character 
perform new parts. Though the way- 
side changes, the destination remains 
unaltered. We develop along the grain 

[93] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

of temperament, and according to its 
cleavage so is our career. Our partic- 
ular task, to be sure, is cut out for us 
by events, yet it does not in spirit- 
ual reaction greatly differ from any 
other that could have been assigned us ; 
though placed through fate's agency, 
we were already qualified for all simi- 
lar positions. A Cromer would have 
found his Egypt anywhere, just as 
every Egypt finally finds its Cromer. 
Ismails of misfeasance always and 
everywhere give competence its oppor- 
tunity. 

Fortune is the accident that befalls 
the fit. There is no perversity of event ; 
the buttered-side-down of ill-luck hap- 
pens because it is the buttered side. 
Everything hits the sore spot, but no 
more than any other; every circum- 
stance fans our facility, but favours oth- 
er qualities no less. One finds what 

[94] 



PERSONALITY 

he is looking for; all things rush to the 
service of him that knows how to use 
them. We wait only the shaping con- 
cept of form to mould life as we wish. 
The accident of poetry overtakes none 
but the poet, in whose case it is sure to 
happen. Successes are at least collat- 
erally incident to our attempts ; we meet 
casually some day the mood for which 
we long have waited. Let us but carry 
the botany-box of observation and we 
shall gather many specimens. Into the 
magazine of the eager mind the spark of 
incident will inevitably drop. Chance 
is a pollen blown haphazard through 
the air and much wasted, whose illim- 
itableness nevertheless insures the fruc- 
tification of every receptivity. 

All ships are alike steady in the 
smooth harbour of convention, but the 
high sea of experience sizes up their sea- 
worthiness: occasion develops hidden 

[95] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

differences among men that are seem- 
ingly the same. Character is, as it were, 
a fuel-wood that often retains its form 
though burned to ashes, yet will disin- 
tegrate at a touch. Out of the same 
kitchen of circumstance we serve up ac- 
cording to our culinary knowledge such 
different dishes. The genius creates a 
cosmos with the dull matter at hand. 
There is nothing so ugly but it may be 
made the abode of beauty: to encoun- 
ter each moment in a spirit of transfig- 
uring it inspires to noble words and 
acts. We become successful when once 
we have discovered the individual way 
of taking life that puts it to the high 
purposes of which we had always seen 
it capable. The efficient are merely 
such as follow a sweeter and saner spir- 
itual hygiene. 

It is the simple, homespun qualities 
of character that are the final arbiters 

[96] 



PERSONALITY 

of our career. The drift of intelligence 
is determined by our moral make-up; 
we can follow happily or successfully 
no calling whose demands are not sub- 
servient to our own necessities. Our 
waters must sink to their natural level 
before there can be calm. Like those 
reptiles that swallow nothing until they 
have first covered it with the saliva of 
receptivity, so is the mind. Experience 
impresses us practically or poetically or 
philosophically according to the kind 
of suggestion or inference it rouses 
within us. If we see things in such a 
large relationship that they are illumi- 
nating or in such a harmonious one 
that they are beautiful, our career tends 
to the artistic; if in such a human way 
that they are cogent, we develop as 
moralists; if in such close connection 
that they are immediately useful, our 
activity takes a practical turn. Before 

[97] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

we can deal with a subject it must be 
made translucent to the rays of truth 
that are peculiar to our vision. The 
pace for energy, whether physical or 
spiritual, is always set by the motions 
of the soul. What surprises us most 
often in great men is not so much their 
intellectual acuteness as some moral 
trait that made it available. It is not 
our abilities but our command of them 
that constitutes character. 

Mere prevalence because pointing to 
suitability or to inner compulsion fur- 
nishes a clue to propensity: everything 
by becoming wide-spread becomes con- 
siderable. The majority view is alwavs 
more important as a fact than as an 
opinion, just as things may collec- 
tively constitute conspiracy that singly 
are innocent. The temper of a people 
already evinces itself in the tempo of 
its national dance: we cross the bound- 

[98] 



PERSONALITY 

ary whenever we encounter the type. 
All lands are epitomized on the steamer 
thither. In these standardized days 
local peculiarities have come to seem 
artificial and as if adopted for effect; 
and not until we see their naturalness 
are we convinced of their innateness. 

Men hold us to a greater accountabil- 
ity for the direction our good qualities 
take than for being devoid of them al- 
together. Over our abilities they imag- 
ine us to be possessed of some power 
of guidance that they do not ascribe to 
us generally. Little do they realize that 
we have often no option in the matter, 
and that, though perhaps with equal 
regret, we must go whithersoever these 
lead if we follow them at all. We 
are committed to our excellences as 
much as to our infirmities and can- 
not dictate their tenour even if we 
would. 

[99] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

Spontaneity needs no voucher. Our 
essential traits ramify into our smallest 
acts and make them characteristic. 
All men are known in the breaking 
of bread. It is only when our little 
ways conform to our large words that 
we are assured of our sincerity; the 
peccadillo suffices to disclose the flaw. 
Devices of relief or alleviation are an 
index of the disposition that finds them 
restorative. As merits are a warning 
of antithetical faults, so from the nat- 
ure of our deficiencies can we often in- 
fer the field of our efficiency. Well may 
one be submissive to the disadvan- 
tages incident to his peculiarities, know- 
ing them to be the small penalty he 
pays for his best gifts. Eccentricities 
are the normal acts of an unusual 
spirit, by means of which it preserves 
itself in subjective normalness and san- 
ity. Every experience corresponds to 

[100] 



PERSONALITY 

the specialty of temperament that un- 
dergoes it; so that needs, demands, 
trials, sicknesses vary with each one of 
us and call for some specific of allevi- 
ation or cure. Even our end is char- 
acteristic of us, for it is in the last 
analysis induced by our characteristics : 
we die true to our metier. 

Of our capacities come our incapaci- 
ties, for traits oblige us to be not only 
nobly true to them in important affairs, 
but also ridiculously so in trifles; we 
cannot escape their jurisdiction. Our 
merits raise hopes that our faults dash. 
Implicated in our genius are our man- 
nerisms and our meannesses: all are of 
one piece and importunacy. The qual- 
ities that make us ashamed of our 
friends are the same qualities that, suit- 
ably exercised, make us proud of them. 
Not wholly within our control is the 
extent to which we shall avail ourselves 

[101] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

of our idiosyncrasies, nor can we stop 
them short where we will. Is not every- 
body put to it in one direction or an- 
other to efface some eccentricity that 
makes him over-conspicuous, seeking 
thereby to discredit what he cannot 
contradict ? Much that is set down to 
affectation or pose or professionalism is 
not in reality that, but simply the con- 
sistent and unconscious outcropping of 
character. Unwittingly and perforce we 
live self out; what is real is unavoid- 
able. 

Men pursue their road to the end — 
for the same reasons and out of the 
same necessities that have brought 
them thus far along it. What fashions 
us, determines and directs us. Though 
the burnt child dreads the fire, it is sure 
in some way to hurt itself again. The 
persistence of causes and the blazed 

trail of repetition always render recur- 

[102] 



PERSONALITY 

rence likely. Instead of sobering us, 
ill consequences often drive us further, 
as a runaway horse is frightened by 
his freedom and runs amuck. Men are 
reckless with borrowed money or they 
would never have borrowed it; friends 
that squander their capital put our own 
at risk. Not for lack of warning is it 
that fatalities befall us, but rather be- 
cause of such repeated warning that 
we have grown callous: we believe no 
sign but the event. Even a close escape 
leaves us audacious. Victims at last are 
we of the very sagacity that preserved 
us longest: new situations arise to 
which the lessons of our experience are 
no longer applicable, and the exercise 
of an outdated wisdom undoes us. 
Acquisition seldom proves tenacious 
when it falls upon changed days, for it 
is unable to perceive or adopt the needed 
precautions. All old Spains of capac- 

[103] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

ity must submit to seeing their golden 
Americas drop one by one from their 
failing grasp. 



[104] 



THE FORETELLABLE FUTURE 

A NALYSIS is the true haruspex, 
y\ and the constitution of the uni- 
verse the Cumsean Books of the 
Sibyl. The future is not given over to 
the threateningly possible but to the 
necessarily continuous. In the inherent 
and immanent lies the philosophy of 
the ultimate: an acumen that could 
consistently unfold the existing, could 
construct the coming. Insight is fore- 
sight; study, the safest prophet. A 
little thought puts us in possession 
of great powers. Though experts are 
sometimes wrong, laymen are only 
sometimes right. In periods of anxi- 
ety the unthinking rush to the bulletin 

of news and, to ascertain the outcome 

[ 105 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

of events, besiege the head-quarters of 
their mere chronicle. But there they 
encounter only uncertainty and hesi- 
tancy, the consulting of precedent, the 
waiting upon further tidings. Experi- 
ence on the other hand sits quietly 
apart and by deduction from the known 
anticipates the unknown, from the in- 
trinsic reasons of things determines 
their extrinsic development. 

Most reversals of tendency are more 
apparent than real; conditions are 
wont to go on unalterably along the old 
lines. What comes suddenly is seldom 
organic and therefore seldom remains. 
Exactly as to-day is the fulfilment of 
yesterday, so will the future be the out- 
growth of to-day. Its components are 
in many instances already extant and, 
as it were, awaiting us. Existence does 
not break off but simply expands. No 
to-morrow of hope is a miraculous birth, 

[106] 



THE FORETELLABLE FUTURE 

but merely a new generation. The 
credulity that lends itself to panaceas, 
formulae for world-rearrangement, get- 
rich-quick schemes, predictions of ap- 
proaching apocalypse and the like is 
due to the small attention given to fixed 
order and natural laws. How can we 
be cognizant of probabilities unless 
familiar with the meteorology of possi- 
bility? The forces now in operation 
may be calculated upon as continuing, 
with only such changes in direction or 
intensity as their clash or union with 
one another will effect. Would that 
their conjunctions could be foretold by 
man's astronomy with the same ac- 
curacy as are those of the stars. 

Though we scan the sky of eventual- 
ity, we fail to look to the windward of 
events. The drift of fact is deceptive: 
most storms move in opposition to the 
prevailing day. It is still fair overhead 

[107] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

though the squall is about to break; 
still leaden when about to clear. Pre- 
dictions rarely prove profitable unless 
they sell the blue skies and buy the 
black. Good reasons are incipient facts, 
and the ideal the only sure future. 
The fan of fate winnows subtly; time 
effects a reclassification of values in- 
credible to any superficial" expectancy. 
Where forecasts of the future generally 
err is in failing to allow for some as 
yet unborn factor — itself the product 
of present forces — that is to play a con- 
trolling part in it. As to-day is surpris- 
ing, so will to-morrow be unexpected. 
The symptoms that frighten the patient 
are not those that alarm the physician, 
but those he has overlooked. 



[108] 



UNIVERSALITIES 

PERMANENCE and transience are 
but varying degrees of tentative- 
ness. The age is an overgrown 
orchard, half in decay and half vital: 
covered here with vine, there sending 
out shoots. On every side the ere while 
uniformity disappears and gives place 
to the irregularities of a changing sky- 
line. With what travail and destructive- 
ness does the new emerge from the old. 
Only the ground-plan of life remains 
the same. 

Upon the sea of existence there is 
never calm, save where by chance 
amidst its smoother waters some glassy 
lagoon is for the moment exempted by 
the air. All apparent peace is speedily 

[109] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

shattered by the breath of disturbance 
or ploughed by the storm-share of ex- 
perience. No sooner do conditions ap- 
pear fixed than a fresh burst of un- 
settlement overwhelms them. Every 
Sunday of repose is followed by a Mon- 
day of upheaval. 

There is no structure that the sheriff 
of time does not one day enter and put 
up to the competitive bidding of de- 
struction. The tragic touches the com- 
monplace and makes it gasp. To the 
wailing of the wind all objects lend 
their note of sympathy: the bow of 
pain is drawn by the merest breeze 
across the viol of the pine. Into our 
little lot comes fate, enacting its great 
drama upon the very boards of routine. 
Who is there but tastes some of the 
bliss, some of the agony of existence; 
from its beauty when is its hideousness 
long absent? Life is to each a com- 

[110] 



UNIVERSALITIES 

posite of loveliness that gives itself and 
of dreadfulness against which he must 
guard. Destiny has in store for every- 
thing, however secure-seeming, a day 
of wrath, a day of mourning, when we 
shall be convulsed with the terror of its 
loss. The pick and flame of event re- 
moves all to make room for the coming. 

Eating at the heart of all things is 
the canker-worm of change ; what then 
can be permanent save change itself 
and Him that allotted to it its task? 
Yet despite the universality of move- 
ment mankind lives on unmoved. 
Laughter hears not the groans of the 
dying, nor does health behold the mis- 
ery of the sick. Over the bones of the 
past, life spreads the surface of its gay- 
ety, and suns itself beneath the palms 
of warm security in plain view of fate's 
Alpine snows. 

No astronomy cures us of regarding 
[ill] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

ourselves as fixed and central in the 
firmament of being. Man dwells on a 
crust of earth interposed between erup- 
tive inner fires and the deadly outer 
cold of emptiness; established upon a 
little spot surrounded by engulfing seas 
and bounded north and south by the 
fatal poles ; clinging to a whirling earth 
that rushes around an unfixed sun; 
himself the occupant of a time-set body 
— and prates forsooth of safety and rest. 
In the space of our brief outing the bird 
is hatched and fledged; the tick of our 
watch measures the span of the midget's 
life — yet we say: 'There's plenty of 
time.' 

Strewn about us lies the scaffold of 
creation. Animate nature confronts us 
in every conceivable form and activ- 
ity — flying, crawling, walking; timid 
or friendly or ferocious; sullen or vocal. 
Few rungs of the ladder of life are miss- 

[112] 



UNIVERSALITIES 

ing. And everywhere creation is still 
incomplete and in process; nature is 
still bringing forth the offspring of the 
first cause. Mankind has yet to body 
forth the angelic face and the divine 
heart. The years are making new be- 
ings of us; the ages of men are the 
generations of God. We creatures are 
the route, each of a particular line of 
development, which by means of our 
consciousness is ever being drawn on to 
its culmination. In far perspective may 
be seen the horizon-line where minds 
meet and souls merge in the full con- 
sciousness of humanity. 

Daily the world unrolls its wonders 
anew, and yearly tells over the beads 
of its phases. Life is in universal com- 
munication on every side: whichever 
way we turn are the infinities. The 
water that I watch in the brook is ocean- 
bound, soon to wash salt shores; 

[113] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

fresh off Mars comes the air that fans 
me. The very earth at my feet is a 
scion of the sun, and the light of com- 
mon day is the breaking surf of aeons 
and immensity. In an unbroken chain 
of causation the universe stretches back 
to its beginning, and is in full mobiliza- 
tion toward its far-off end. What is 
existence as we gaze out upon it but a 
moment's stage of an infinite progress 
— its pillars of permanence but our in- 
stantaneous impression of a steady 
march in all its ranks from the dawn of 
time to the last day ? The world is 
drawn from under our feet as we stand, 
and we must tread merely to keep our 
relative position in it. 

We look up through an unmurmur- 
ing sea of space past the steady, flash- 
less light-houses of its headlands, and 
see that except for the spinning of the 
spheres there is nothing to indicate or 

[114] 



UNIVERSALITIES 

even constitute Time but that all is one 
long continuity of light. The causa- 
tive sequence threading the present 
with all that is past or still to come, is 
in truth the co-temporaneousness of 
eternity. In the flux of event existence 
seems fleeting; but among the tracts of 
timelessness it has no transience at all. 
Coexistence is the only real chronology. 
Consciousness because caught up with 
and accompanying change is incapa- 
ble of perceiving continuance, yet is it- 
self the immanence of the changeless. 



[115] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

SELF - CONFIDENCE inoculates 
with its greatness and makes us 
rise to its stature. We live up or 
down to our conception of ourselves: 
the inner picture projects itself into 
conduct. A good opinion of one's self 
is necessary to the deserving of it; 
handsome-is may look at the mirror, 
but handsome-does cannot afford to. 
We thrive only when we entertain such 
idea of our importance as makes us pro- 
lific; all minds have need of some fer- 
tilizer of conceit. Those who believe in 
us energize us because they inculcate 
a similar belief. In order to offset the 
world's indifference we must keep our 
good qualities in constant realization; 

[116] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

it is never safe to undervalue ourselves 
any more than it is to permit our under- 
valuation by others. We are infected 
by false appearances whether good or 
bad and come to merit our reputations. 
To cut a sorry figure endangers self- 
respect: even our attire attunes us to 
the pitch on which we would play our 
souls. It is not ignoble to study effect 
to the extent that it s*erves as an exam- 
ple or reacts on self. The pace, the 
rhythm, sets the mood: unconsciously 
we become the part we assume. Pose 
is not without sincerity ; and in the end 
we make it true. There is an affecta- 
tion that is aspiration. Let us be 
actors who identify ourselves with a 
great role. Ambition is a frame that 
fact soon fills. 

All great constructions rise within a 
scaffold of faith. The leaders of men 
are able to conjure up about them a 

[117] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

belief in possibilities far beyond the 
truth. In their spiritual atmosphere 
other men are lifted up into a mirage of 
themselves, and earth swims in a sky 
of fancy. The superiority of a cause 
transmutes all personal inferiority, and 
one feels and acts the aristocrat he is. 
Let us await no adventitious mantle of 
authority but assume at once the pres- 
tige from within. 

Unless we preserve our attitude we 
are torn away and overwhelmed by the 
flood. As long as we look to another 
for our cue we do not possess ourselves. 
The only avenue to self-confidence is 
self-reliance: when our standard dis- 
appears life gropes. No one can ob- 
serve, much less profit, by fluctua- 
tions who is not himself fixed. If we 
abdicate our point of view there is no 
longer any royalty in our acts. To 
take counsel is to grade down the level 

[118] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

of our good ideas; more mistakes 
come from misunderstanding directions 
than from receiving none. Until we 
have our own rating we accept any that 
others press upon us. Youth is a frame 
house that has no equableness of inner 
temperature but varies with the heat 
and cold of the circumstantial weather; 
whereas the thick walls of experience 
preserve in one's temperament an 
equanimity through every change. The 
years gather a constancy of impetus that 
is but little affected by the loss of a 
night's rest or by the latest mishap. So 
confirmed does one's course of life be- 
come that even the most affecting 
events lose their power to deflect it. 

Beginning is the chill plunge into 
delicious waters. There is no safe 
casement but courage: the timid, like 
old fortified towns, are confined within 
their walls of defence, but energy is a 

[119] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

large city that overleaps all protective 
lines and relies wholly on the offensive 
for safety. Life led on the defensive 
cowers and eventually capitulates : only 
aggression can win the war. Let us 
call in the flagman of fear and go 
ahead. Initiative protects and is self- 
protected. There is no continuity in 
clinging to things as they are, but only 
by changing them to our self-expansion. 
Advance alone keeps the old propor- 
tions. All rights are conditional, all 
conditions relative, all relations vari- 
able — so that continuity itself is change. 
The departures we make so fearfully 
and reluctantly prove to anticipate by 
little the inevitable evictions of time: 
we only forestall fate when we effect 
the most radical of moves. 

Men are masters of what they take, 
not of what they hold. Values are 
learned in their acquisition and lost in 

[120] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

their retention. With those that la- 
bour in self-support circumstances are 
in alliance, but in conspiracy against 
those who live on their income: one 
cannot feel sure of his money unless he 
makes it. If we practise mere prudence, 
we are restricted to the small adapta- 
tions of living instead of passing on into 
the wider relations to which large activ- 
ities introduce us. A studied economy 
is at the expense of productiveness and 
creativeness, but earnings come through 
the expenditure of these. The local, 
technical, detail information necessary 
to the avoidance of life's minor ills, 
costs the contemplation and society of 
its major goods. We often lose more 
than we gain by our scheming: 
shrewdness is a defensive policy that 
lays one under a heavy contribution of 
unloveliness. Only the affirmative qual- 
ities shepherd life. The margins of ex- 

[121] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

istence are nowhere so certain that we 
can rely on them; between us and dis- 
aster there are only slender reserves — 
of harvest, of fortune, of morality. A 
short crop kills a generation; some 
error of judgment and we are penniless, 
some flaw of standard or slip of con- 
duct and we are behind the bars. To 
overcome is safer than any escape, to 
advance than any retreat. Attack is the 
sure asylum. We out-distance every 
danger we surmount and quickest climb 
to safety: the hills are free from the 
perils of the plain. Upon the barome- 
ter of the soul's altitude may be read 
the degree of its impregnability. Shade 
is not necessarily shelter; nor does re- 
tirement necessarily shield. More and 
more do experience and civilization 
make men look to their own develop- 
ment rather than to any intrenchment 
of protection or prestige. Time turns 

[122] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

all its erewhile fortifications into parks 
and playgrounds for the people ; aristo- 
cratic palaces of privilege are every- 
where occupied by a swarming prom- 
iscuity. The world is illuminated now- 
adays without the lights showing. 

Independence is a self-conferred or- 
der of nobility, and at once classifies us 
anew. The instinct of what we are 
and the strength bred of its assertion 
radiate from us an indisputable no- 
blesse. It is the insignia of our due that 
it is assumed unconsciously and ac- 
corded unquestioningly. To be actu- 
ated by intrinsic motives always com- 
mands deference ; natural courtesy wins 
social supremacy. Only at the centre 
is repose: the peripherally-minded are 
kept constantly rushing and are ever 
tempted tangentially into space; but 
the pivotal are at peace. Easy man- 
ners show mental ease. The curse of 

[ 123] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

the conventional is stiffness; only orig- 
inality acts gracefully. They are the 
delightful companions who plant them- 
selves on fundamental reasons and 
treat all incident as illustrative thereof. 
Everywhere copyists are at a discount. 
Men think to win consideration by 
conformity, but that is the most likely 
way to forfeit it : the envied and sought- 
after are those that are sufficient unto 
themselves. There is no such superi- 
ority as indifference. We care little for 
comment when we have once won some 
great approval that makes us sure of 
ourselves. To be quietly but confi- 
dently self-insistent is the most effect- 
ive method of combating supercilious 
ignorance. As soon as any one takes a 
decided stand we grant him a rehear- 
ing. Steadfastness is a fixed buoy 
around which all floating craft moor. 
Confidence facilely meets the diffi- 

[124] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

cult day. The intrepid sail a westerly 
voyage and keep gaining time; but the 
timid sail an easterly voyage and keep 
losing it. Diffidence checkmates every 
move: only assurance wins the game- 
Our environment, if we fear to face it, 
contracts — and our career dwindles. 
We cannot trust our judgment unless 
we are willing to do the disagreeable 
and difficult thing. To those that can 
cope with the danger, courage is natu- 
ral, but caution to those that cannot. 
We lose the benefit of our decisions un- 
less we act decisively. Without sturdy 
faith in them all our superiority of in- 
sight or knowledge is wasted, for false 
appearances frighten us out of our ad- 
vantage. No venture can be vindicated 
save by backing it up. The profits are 
won by a steady adherence to our com- 
mitments, not by a frequent drawing 
out to try elsewhere. Every enterprise 

[125] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

requires us to turn into it again the 
earnings that accrue. Determination 
buries its very gunwale before it will 
luff. 

We live in such a world as we think 
it : the optimist is fortunate in his choice 
since he calls his beautiful one into be- 
ing. The flag of life floats in the breeze 
of its own joy. Philosophy is creator, 
for the mind propagates its kind: a 
man's circle is the progeny of his soul. 
We move on the level of our eyes, not 
of our feet. Existence is happy or un- 
happy according as it pays attention 
to the things that go well or the 
things that go ill; though the dwelling 
upon wrong be only for purposes of 
correction, it nevertheless deprives us 
of the enjoyment of the right. The 
sublimation of good by idealization 
keeps even step with the sublimation 
of evil by caricature. Such is the co- 

[126] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

incidence of glaring error with con- 
spicuous merit that the field of partisan- 
ship is always free: the comment on 
all things is antiphonal. It is chiefly 
misgiving about ourselves that makes 
us critical of others, just as most posi- 
tiveness is a mere whistling to keep up 
the courage of some doubt. When 
we are sure of our position we are 
lenient: men are intolerant simply in 
self-defence. Our own character is the 
advocatus diaboli that keeps down the 
roll of saints. 

Confidence is by nature triumphant 
and has won already. Dejection looks 
at the ground and denies the heavens; 
but courage sweeps the sky. Of a piece 
with God's mercy is the heart's undis- 
may at its sin; and its resiliency after 
every fall is an earnest of God's for- 
giveness. In the provencal of the soul 
the cansouns of Mai are ever strum- 

[127] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

ming and the flower-presses ever scent 
the air. Each morning the gallant 
heart rallies itself and shouts hurrah 
for the hero in us to-day — this time we 
will over the wall and into the enemy's 
very stronghold. The event telescopes 
its terrors. Every circumstance con- 
tributes to a purpose once asserted; 
with the uplift of cheerfulness we open 
easily every sagging door of difficulty. 
To its swift-moving traffic the world 
instinctively makes way; mankind ac- 
commodates itself to the courageous. 
Weak men band themselves together for 
mutual assistance, whereas the strong 
impress their fellows into willing service. 
The faithless blow is ineffective; but 
sureness shatters. Fearful age reaps 
its fears; cats and small boys go un- 
scathed because they do not know the 
danger. In vain is the unconvinced 
word. There is no compelling prose- 

[128] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

lytism but that of one who testifies 
whereof he does know.' Certainty goes 
straight to the precise phrase, but du- 
biety doubles its words and mixes its 
metaphors. Only what we feel fully 
we say vividly: conviction prints. 

The world's wisdom must not un- 
duly overawe : all precedent may fail in 
its applicability to us. From our ob- 
ligation to the special self entrusted to 
us, no criticism, no approval can ab- 
solve. The duty of self-fulfilment takes 
precedence over any of self-correction: 
we are under bond only to what we 
have. No opportunity will be lacking 
if we do not let the opportune pass. 
The great reproach hereafter will not 
be because of any deficiency, but 
because of failure to assert some 
efficiency. Omissions have large star- 
ing eyes from which we cannot look 
away. We score by practising our 

[129] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

strong points rather than by tending 
our weak points. One criticises, an- 
other appreciates — if we listen to the 
first, we give attention to our faults, 
lose our initiative, dry up and blow 
away; if, however, to the second, we 
develop our powers, grow beyond our 
failings and expand into our full crea- 
tiveness. 

There is as much cause for confidence 
as for diffidence when life sends us 
some never-travelled way. To arouse 
disapproval or derision is a hopeful 
sign. Only averages and compro- 
mises are received with unanimity ; the 
unfamiliar truth or exceptional person- 
ality is always a subject of disagree- 
ment. On every important question 
there is a yes for every no, and we are 
driven back upon our own judgment; 
the world takes sides for and against us 
and we have to rally ourselves in self- 

[ 130] 



THE VOICE VICTORIOUS 

support. It is under any circumstances 
marvellous that we should pay so much 
attention to others' opinion of us, seeing 
that we know it to be founded on so 
much less accurate data than our own. 
Though we find not our ore at this 
depth or at that, let us never doubt 
that the place is mineralized. In the to- 
morrow of eternity why not the same 
penny of reward, even though the elev- 
enth hour is passed and the noon of 
finality has struck ? Upon the high 
sea of hope there is no derelict that 
salvage may not yet tow to port. Ex- 
perience inspires such confidence in 
the methods of creation that it incul- 
cates confidence in the results. What 
Mohave of uselessness shall not be 
reclaimed, what desert-sands of barren- 
ness shall not become a very Red- 
lands of fertility. Without any special 
qualification on their part, but merely 

[isi] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

by operation of the influences over- 
spreading them, the miracle of the dis- 
ciples was worked. Our acquaintance 
with the universe makes us content to 
lie quiet in its hands. The landscape 
lives on the charity of the sky, yet pros- 
pers: it is at the mercy of the sun and 
rain for sustenance, yet it seldom lacks. 



[132] 



EVERY END A NEW BEGINNING 

THOUGH every transition of soul 
brings an autumn of fading, it 
is always spring in some other 
seasonableness of the heart. Contin- 
uous decadence is coincident with con- 
tinuous renaissance; side by side upon 
the perennial stem of life are its ripen- 
ing and its falling fruits. There is a 
fatality each moment among the flowers 
and every few days a Fall succeeds their 
Spring; yet does not the rose-bush of 
bloom become bare. Interest is never 
in abeyance, but upon any demise of 
purpose vests instantly in some sur- 
vivor. The sadness of cessation quick- 
ly passes over into the cheer of a new 

enlivenment. Everywhere joy presses 

[133 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

close upon sorrow; the king is dead, 
long live the king. With the gong of 
dismay change announces the end, but 
heralds the beginning with the bugle- 
call of exhilaration. Extremes have 
an easy transition: even in calamity 
the thought of the next step steadies 
us. Hope is the sickle-moon seen at 
sundown. The consumptive's courage 
burns ever brighter as the flame of life 
flickers and goes out. Despair is the 
final act by which hope keeps itself 
alive. 

The sacred fire is never extinguished. 
Though we grow old and gray, the 
gayety of youth goes on. It is always 
the high season somewhere; always 
upon some coast of existence the tide 
is at full. Fashion flits from the spa 
only to reappear in the metropolis; 
life, instead of ceasing, assumes new 

forms. Purpose does not meet defeat 

[ 134] 



EVERY END A NEW BEGINNING 

when death trips us, but the ball is 
rushed on to others who kick the goal. 
At the feet of the present the future 
still frisks about in frocks. Leader- 
ship ever passes on to stronger hands; 
nation succeeds nation in world su- 
premacy. The flourishing periods of 
civilization are not overwhelmed in the 
ensuing chaos, but, though lying long 
hidden in monasteries and libraries, 
come to light again in new lands and 
under changed conditions. There are 
few phases of our personal experience, 
few factors in the world's affairs for 
which life has not an understudy ready. 
No star sinks but another rises. And 
though the earth should slip into the 
sea, it would be but to raise up a new 
continent elsewhere. 

Truth is a tenant that survives the 
destruction of its every habitation: 
concepts do not cease with the objects 

[135] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

that once embodied and, as we thought, 
conditioned them. No inundation of 
barbarism, no French Revolution of 
effacement, has ever left the spirit ex- 
tinct or prevented its rekindling on the 
morrow. Through every flood of sub- 
mersion, some small ark of survival has 
conserved a saving remnant of continu- 
ity sufficient to re-people life. Faith 
driven from its earlier abodes takes ref- 
uge in a larger outlook. However much 
creeds may crumble, sacredness is not 
left without attribution. Shrines rise at 
large and grant sanctuary to our evicted 
reverence; worship finds new temples 
opened to it. Most reformations of 
error, most extensions of truth are the 
asylum sought by an exiled spirit: the 
vaster regions of verity have generally 
been colonized by those for whom there 
was no longer room in the old home 
of faith. 

[136] 



EVERY END A NEW BEGINNING 

Our tree stands — our leafage strews 
the ground. Every year shows the con- 
tinuity of youth and the Attica of 
time. The early flowers that we re- 
member are perennials. Age is an atti- 
tude; though life whiten our visage 
with an edge of foam, so long as we 
look to the future we are still young. 
It is not the step but the stoop that be- 
trays our failing strength. When the 
wealth of the forest falls, a transposed 
glory gleams upward from the earth; 
when the luxuriance of existence is 
over, the beauty of the bare branches 
comes into view. Not till the senses 
dwindle does the true distinction of 
the spirit appear; the thinning of the 
woods gives the vista. Our physical 
diminuendo is more than made up by 
our spiritual crescendo. If life lessens 
in alacrity, it increases in fulness; in 
default of the mind's sunlight, the 

[137] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

moonlight of memory shines. What 
though the thoughts fall from the fee- 
ble ringers of the brain, the will itself 
is not enfeebled. Health may still be 
hale, even if confined to the heart: 
there is no decrepitude while the sym- 
pathy is agile. All examples of heroic 
infirmity unite in showing upon how 
little perception or participation activ- 
ity may yet thrive. Energy breathes 
through the sense that is keenest and 
sums itself in one if only that be left; 
we grow sensitive on the side that 
danger threatens or advantage comes. 
Spiritual dominion has ever gone forth 
from a restricted territorial domain. 
The soul is still in the ascendant as 
the body sets. Death is a profounder 
stopping to think. 

Life reaches its fruitfulness when its 
foliage is touched; the sharp frost of 
experience ripens. Difficulties burnish 

[ 138] 



EVERY END A NEW BEGINNING 

more and more the gold of worth; 
the later the night the brighter the 
stars. It is when we notice the crude- 
ness and garishness of the young that 
we realize how time has matured and 
tempered us. Efflorescence bespeaks 
only a temporary mood, but the tree 
of character is the permanent expres- 
sion of the heart. With the increase of 
our own competence the conduct of af- 
fairs appears to devolve upon incom- 
petent shoulders. To-day seems less, 
because of larger eyes: the landscape 
looks more and more spring-like as the 
season of the sight advances. Like a 
far-bound train the younger genera- 
tion passes by, its windows rilled with 
eager faces; the elder gazes for a mo- 
ment and then turns back to the con- 
tentment of its quiet roadside. When 
noon is past we welcome the shade as 
eagerly as in the morning we sought the 

[139] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

sun, and nightfall brings the sweetest 
hour of all. The winds of unrest drop 
with the day. Let us cease also as the 
day does, and gradually and beautifully 
grow dark. 



[ 140 ] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF 
REALITY 

IIFE in the living little resembles any 
_j statement of it we ever heard; 
all names and descriptions stop 
us short of the truth. Experiences are 
either encountered under some prej- 
udice or yield some disappointment; 
the reality proves different from our 
preconceptions. Everything is more 
than anything that can be said of it : to 
live within whatsoever characterization 
of ourselves is restrictive. We do not 
by parading our social or official posi- 
tion, however exalted, magnify our- 
selves, but instead unwittingly disclose 
a collar of subservience. Mediacy kills 
the living verities. Most works of art, 

[141] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

most great occasions come to us hidden 
under so many prefaces and expositions 
that we miss their real significance. 
The music as it bubbled up in the 
master's soul, so let it speak to me. 
It is for us to rebaptize all creations of 
the muse, all emergencies of the soul 
with names of more intrinsic meaning. 

We play life with counters instead 
of with its coin. Terms and phrases 
are symbols that no longer call up a 
picture of the objects or situations or 
impressions for which they stand. The 
finance of experience has become such 
an affair of verbal debits and credits 
that we are surprised to find bank- 
ruptcy meaning an empty pocket-book ; 
nor are we prepared for the multiplic- 
ity of opportunity and power that lies 
coiled within the fact of wealth. 

Nothing long continues true to its 
nomenclature: reality rises and recedes, 

[ 142] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

and former readings of it merely mark 
a one-time level. When put to the test 
few things respond as expected: every 
piercing of the surface surprises us 
either by a hollowness of pretence or 
by a spurting-out of substance. Never 
do nations go to war but some star- 
tling corruption or unreadiness, some 
unsuspected capacity or valour, is 
brought to light. All reputations that 
belie, eventually betray themselves. 
To successors failing to live up to it, 
the firm name ceases to be an asset of 
good-will; corporations often find their 
very continuity a handicap. Truth is 
a health that soon shows through the 
skin. 

Fundamental causes are slowest to 
give superficial indications of them- 
selves. Save for some occasionally per- 
ceptible loss of power we do not notice 
where a false philosophy or a theologi- 

[143] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

cal error hurts. How bravely men keep 
up appearances ; even in the case of our 
friends, we should never suspect that 
all is not well with them were it not for 
their inadvertent acceptance of some 
assistance from us or for some surpris- 
ing venture on their part. One for- 
gets that beneath every fair exterior of 
existence are poor failing human or- 
gans and the same tiresome, galling 
detail. It is the fight rather than the 
plight that raises the flag of distress and 
catches sympathy's attention. Char- 
acter reaches surface beautification last 
— only affectation begins with it. The 
flourishing periods of civilization have 
not long survived their structural stage 
of energy; superficial refinements co- 
incide with decline. Among both indi- 
viduals and peoples a disregard of 
external aesthetics serves usually as 
a badge of basic sincerity. All that 

[144] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

is settled on fundamental principles 
makes circumstances subservient to it: 
it is incredible how quickly an un- 
heeded voice of reason can over-run 
and conquer the opinionated world. In 
new countries or during social revul- 
sions, etiquette like everything else arti- 
ficial goes by the board, yet a new code 
of kindness and a natural propriety al- 
ways spring up in its place. Manners 
that are considerate can never be rude; 
nor conduct that is right, discourteous. 
As observation tends toward intro- 
spection, so transcription turns into 
idealization: no copies are exact, no 
replicas extant, no realism possible. 
The truth never tallies with what is 
told of it: intimacy is forever recast- 
ing knowledge. To read is to breathe 
the breath of another instead of the 
fresh air; language itself is a mislead- 
ing table of contents to the book of 

[145] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

life — of which even the title-page is am- 
biguous. More and more are we struck 
with the difference between impres- 
sions of existence gained from chron- 
icle or fiction and those derived from 
our own experience. Reality cannot 
be realized unless lived; nor the past 
any longer be accurately imagined save 
by those who participated in it. The 
topography of events is fictitious. 

Theory acquires an affected tone, 
but fact gets its own voice back again: 
the contact with rough actualities keeps 
observation vital, conclusions sane, and 
ourselves keyed true. It is practical 
experience that teaches the philosophic 
truth: we do not amend our philoso- 
phy till life itself proves it false. 
Without field-notes art cannot speak a 
living language, nor exhale again the 
ozone of reality. The books are in the 
library, but their contents are outside. 

[ 146] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

We develop our knowledge only 
through its definite application; the 
mind needs instances as retaining points 
of its ideas. To every one there come 
times when the medicine of thought 
no longer avails and he must have 
recourse to the surgery of action — 
times when trifling incidents better 
serve to stir the pool of healing than 
all his brooding contemplation. De- 
prived of outward event one loses 
all measure and perspective; the sub- 
jective mood is the intransitive verb 
of life and lacks object upon which 
vivifyingly to go over. Though travers- 
ing an infinitude of space, the sunlight 
yet gives up its warmth and brightness 
only to terrestrial contact ; and what is 
the sea but monotony save on its coasts ? 
One observes among open-air nations 
like the English, not only the tonic voice, 
but the blunt speech; forceful men 

[147] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

were usually reared on a farm, or re- 
vert thither for restoration. To those 
that are shut up to their thoughts 
little externals become brimful of 
zest: after a long confinement with 
what a rush of delight does not the ob- 
jective world again fill the starved 
heart and senses. Nature is a second 
childhood to us every spring. 

The world, though a place of known 
frontiers, of explored roads and ex- 
ploited regions, remains nevertheless 
an experience of surprising resources. 
Impressions do not lose their freshness 
nor adventures their zest simply be- 
cause the knowledge or narration of 
them has lost its novelty : to live the old 
story is a new story. Things intel- 
lectually tiresome may be emotionally 
tense, the conventionally matter-of- 
course may be individually eventful: 
happiness is not conditioned by the 

[148] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

cleverness of its conversation. There 
is yet left us to taste practically many 
experiences of which the mind has 
wearied: upon mental crusts the emo- 
tions will often banquet. 

Little remains to be said of life — 
much, however, about its new meanings : 
the objectively dead is still subjectively 
alive. It is easy for philosophy to re- 
duce troubles to their truthful propor- 
tions, but not for the feelings. Though 
existence is to the crude simply an 
affair of the senses and quickly worn 
threadbare, to the cultivated it is a 
mine of unimaginable richness. The 
simplest act may give satisfaction to a 
complex spirituality, or serve as its 
expression; the smallest event may 
supply profound thought with a field 
for exercise. Through all hardships 
the human touch is able to reconcile 
us to fate. Women atone for their 

[149] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

want of reasoning by their unreasoning 
love. Of many delights a rational basis 
is not immediately discoverable. To 
what logical place can any utilitarian 
metaphysics assign the musical ecstasy 
of birds, or how explain its effect upon 
the ear of our sensibility ? 

Truth battens on the trite. The 
outworn renews itself every day and 
in each individual; the old rehabili- 
tates itself and through some newly- 
presented attractiveness wins continu- 
ing admiration. All really important 
things are universal and commonplace ; 
the joy of existence is derived from its 
staples. Most phenomena that hold 
the world agog are new but in name; 
popular fallacies are usually but tak- 
ing presentations of time-worn error. 
Until it has gone through every stage 
of manifestation and thrashed out all 
the combinations and permutations of 

[150] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

expression, no vital idea is satisfied. 
Time never tires of the truth, but per- 
petuates it by endless re-enactment. 
The past repeats itself on the live lips 
of to-day. 

Most appeals to sentiment and ro- 
mance fall wide of the mark: what- 
ever their medium — whether speaking 
through music or through painting, on 
the stage or in the real life of others 
— one feels in them a remoteness of 
application to himself. We under- 
stand only what we imaginatively com- 
pass, and this is limited by experience. 
Of even the organic world we get no 
true conception save as we think our- 
selves into it. Trees are but visual 
images to any one that cannot place 
himself within them and sense the 
branches and the twitter of the leaves 
and the current sap. Comprehension 

[151] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

as well as considerateness consists in 
substituting ourselves; the law is to 
think how things would seem to us or 
look to others. It is because of the 
indifference of those whom they bene- 
fit that mal-arrangements persist; men 
are patient under injustices that do 
them personally no harm. The active 
propaganda against to-day's social and 
economic system is carried on chiefly 
by the unfortunate, while those for 
whom that system makes provision 
contribute but a passive condemna- 
tion of it. Larger sympathy would 
not only cure all ignorance but like- 
wise correct all injustice. Exper- 
iences that set windows in the side 
of actuality give us godlike sight. 
Herein is the power of drama, speak- 
ing to us in the first person, visualizing 
its descriptions, soliloquizing its psy- 
chology and adding to words both feat- 

[152] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

ure and gesture; we seem endowed by 
it with the calm all-seeing eyes of 
destiny. 

Appearance is little noticed after its 
first impression. Environment merely 
dances attendance: the furniture and 
pictures of existence stand about dumb- 
ly waiting should consciousness want 
them, receiving from it only an occa- 
sional glance. It is impossible to fore- 
tell what semblance surroundings may 
come to wear. Men with whom we 
associate become mere centres of their 
sentiments and activities, and into our 
thought of them the idea caused at 
first by their physical presence no 
longer enters: some wraith of per- 
sonality rises up to replace them. 
The kindly faces into which we read 
so much meaning are usually without 
attractiveness whatsoever to the coldly 
critical. Beneath every troubled sur- 

[153] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

face of life we soon see that the stream 
runs limpid. Even from the ills of 
existence the joy of combat or endur- 
ance is not missing. How simple then 
the recipe of happiness and how uni- 
versally found its ingredients. If to 
any circumstance we add the proper 
reaction, be it acceptance or resistance, 
the ambrosia is ours. Life must in- 
deed be happy-at-heart inasmuch as 
having or lacking, enjoying or endur- 
ing, receiving or giving, alike means 
delight. Since success leads to failure 
and failure to success, and both ad- 
vance us, what matter which ? 

For the inexperienced every moment 
contains a fresh surprise; so contrary 
to expectation is truth that the unini- 
tiated find everything alarmingly askew. 
Causes seem inadequate to their con- 
sequences; details incapable of their 
sum. Upon a general sameness super- 

[ 154] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

venes an endless differentiation. The 
world like art achieves its illusions in 
unsuspected ways. We cannot from 
any composite of the traits or acts that 
give to personality expression, account 
for its impression. Analysis cheats ap- 
pearance; effect is always 'value as a 
going concern,' an item that no static 
inventory can state. Strikingly at vari- 
ance with the internal aspect of things 
is the external. Everybody belies his 
foreign relations : no visit maintains the 
impression gained abroad. It is gen- 
erally some imperceptible factor that is 
the determining one. Taste turns on 
trifles; a feature amiss mars all. The 
decline of the day announces itself in 
the glint of the sunshine; the autumn 
is presaged by a mere sparkle in the air. 
Experience is a continuous redis- 
covery of the universe. The other 
half of life is another hemisphere of 

[155] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

truth, the unfamiliar is an adventure. 
Things spring into being when we no- 
tice them, and when they have passed 
our door are past. New knowledge 
is the more operative — hence the con- 
vert's zeal. What we have just be- 
come aware of has just happened. It 
is always the hour that last struck. 
Unconsciously we compare the state of 
affairs to-day with that obtaining on 
our first acquaintance with them, as if 
thereby some absolute measure of their 
development and change were arrived 
at: there seems to have been no reality 
back of our own recollection of it. 
Modern times begin with childhood — 
however much to our fathers' age those 
seemed the latter days. When another 
leaves there is simply one less, but 
when we leave the world ceases. 

As our thought of the existent is in- 
exact, so is our attitude toward the past 

[156] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

erroneous: sentiment rarely lets us re- 
member it as it really was, or as it 
would now seem to us. Even could we 
revert to former days, we could not re- 
live them: the associative and im- 
aginative centre of outlook has shifted, 
and we should search for it in vain 
among the surroundings and condi- 
tions in which it once existed. Not 
from early scenes or experiences are 
the early impressions to be regained, 
but rather from such as now bear to 
us the same ratio : the last is always the 
nearest counterpart of the first. The 
joys and sorrows of memory may both 
exceed and fall short of their originals, 
seldom, however, do they correspond. 
How difficult it is to keep the critical 
faculty free from the fluctuations of 
acumen. Failings and advantages are 
set down as characteristic of those per- 
sons or places among whom by chance 

[157] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

we first observe them, even though 
they may be everywhere prevalent. 
Facts alter with our estimate of them. 
We do not notice how the few piles 
of particulars upon which our generali- 
zations rest, are little by little weaken- 
ing, till faith unsupported comes down 
with a crash. Among untrained minds 
the objective and subjective tend to 
become inextricably mixed, and only 
artistic or philosophic judgment can 
distinguish between them. Until we 
know our own focus we cannot tell 
distance; the noises of the night are 
ominous because at an unknown re- 
move. Every approaching figure is the 
expected, every sound the one for 
which we wait; if we are looking for 
birds, the flies seem them. As we are 
overawed by difficulties so are we prej- 
udiced by what is to our interest : good- 
fortune in our own case is always due to 

[158] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

merit, ill-fortune to luck. We hold 
others responsible for what only by the 
accident of circumstance is ours. Men 
gauge their movement by the stream 
instead of by the bank: envy mistakes 
every retrogression of its competitors 
for its own progress. Both fortunately 
and unfortunately the conditions lifting 
or lowering us tend so to separate us 
from our compeers and from former 
contacts, that we no longer realize the 
change. One is more ashamed of the 
evils he still combats than of those to 
which he has already succumbed. Like 
steam that is invisible till condensed by 
the air, so does proficiency first know it- 
self on seeing how it outstrips others; 
and it is generally some incident recall- 
ing a higher plane of thought or conduct 
that makes us conscious of the lower 
on which we are living. From time to 
time days of discrimination light up 

[159] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

our life and show us in what a fool's 
paradise we had been dwelling: noth- 
ing so crushes us with self-conviction 
as another's amazement or scorn. Ac- 
cording to our code so is our criticism. 
It is instinctive to think the world of a 
piece with ourselves: to the refined 
every one is a gentleman, whereas the 
vulgar refer to every one as 'that fel- 
low.' In the same way tricksters take 
the prosperous man for a crook, while 
the noble heart reads kinship in all 
eyes. The trustfulness of children tow- 
ard strangers is voluminous praise of 
parents. 

Every philosophy is an apologia pro 
vita, and usually pro vita sua: some 
self- justification or self -establishment 
accounts for the peculiar form of it 
that is ours. At each step we feel as 
if bound to vindicate our own course 
as distinguished from all others. Most 

[160] 



THE AMAZINGNESS OF REALITY 

attitudes and therefore most careers 
have their origin in some early wound 
of the soul; so that the psychologically 
keen can elicit one's inner history 
from any little act or word. It is be- 
cause spontaneity speaks us truest that 
popularity or neglect so often turns upon 
little unpremeditated expressions of our- 
selves. We hold such theories as best 
thread our thoughts. The world must 
be adjusted to the needle of our need 
and its meaning combed to our fashion. 
Personal impressions are forever seek- 
ing a reliable formula to contain them; 
consistency weaves a web of its own 
design. The author really has no 
choice of subject: write what he may, 
it is still collateral notation of the one 
central idea animating him; his every 
book is of necessity an anthology of 
himself. Preachment of whatever sort 
is a formulation of the speaker's own 

[161] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

experiences. In the last analysis it is 
our spiritual exigencies that determine 
the special character of our religion; 
not possibly can the dreamer and the 
doer get precisely the same meaning 
from the same tenets or be similarly 
affected by the same form of worship. 
The generalizations made by each mind 
are the bivouacs that trace its line of 
march; the philosophy of each mind 
is the glare of its camp-fires reflected 
in the sky. 



[162] 



THE AREA OF LIFE 

WHATEVER its income happi- 
ness lives up to it, and is sel- 
dom more opulent for any 
good fortune. The percentage of life's 
net return varies little with the expan- 
sion or contraction of its business; we 
grow but do we thereby grow happier ? 
Expense is the inseparable shadow of re- 
ceipt; cost quickly overtakes profit. To 
pay for its increased comfort modern life 
imposes an increased exertion; the de- 
mands upon wealth impoverish it. Ease 
always has additional problems thrust 
upon it; facilities only require us to 
cover a larger field. Through nothing 
adventitious can joy lengthen its lead. 
We cannot have privilege without ac- 
companying obligation, nor ten talents 

[ 163 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

without the necessity of doubling them. 
Knowledge of consequences renders 
us responsible for causes; we are ac- 
countable for what we can prevent. 
There is no self-development that does 
not make us aware of unsuspected de- 
fects and defaults; no new insight but 
is mixed with some disillusion. Accre- 
tions of power introduce to wider am- 
bitions, fresh jealousies, further disap- 
pointments and regrets. 

The susceptibilities of refinement are 
capable of an exquisiteness not only of 
pleasure but also of pain ; every newly- 
formed surface of sensitiveness is ex- 
posed to some newly-felt soreness. Per- 
fection encroaches and fills everything 
short of it with dissatisfaction. In- 
evitably a sense of his unprofitableness 
haunts any one of high purpose. It is 
a mercy to the modest that they are 
judged by others; to the self-satisfied, 

[ 164] 



THE AREA OF LIFE 

that they are so . Self-importance quick- 
ly fades from the far-seeing eye: dis- 
couraging days are the invariable pre- 
cursors of victory. Back of the finished 
touch of the masterpiece lay what sense 
of incompleteness, what compromise of 
unfulfillable conception. 

In vain we add if anything be still 
wanting; consciousness is ever con- 
cerned with omissions: the one thing 
withheld annoys us more than any 
ninety-and-nine bestowals please. So- 
licitude is a fringe formed by the threads 
that are lacking: the drawn- work of 
existence occupies us. All things of 
which we are sure — be they advan- 
tages, abilities, merits, friends — are left 
alone in the wilderness of neglect, while 
self goes a-seeking something lost, or 
only desired. What is matter-of-course 
is slighted: not for old and tried 
friends is the entertainment spread, 

[165] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

but for some mere acquaintance whose 
favour is still in doubt. Does not some 
trifling foreground of risk often make 
us oblivious to the whole background 
of safety? Success does not necessa- 
rily cease to mourn its incidental mis- 
takes; it is always the most conscien- 
tious who think they have committed 
the unpardonable sin. Worry cannot 
sleep on the softest bed, and neuralgia 
is enough to neutralize the heart's de- 
sire. If we are homesick, what para- 
dise pleases ? A muscle amiss may flag 
the train of thought, and a racked 
nerve derail attention. More dis- 
concerting are small points of diver- 
gence where there is a general similar- 
ity either of idea or language or sym- 
pathy, than any total unlikeness would 
be; the silence of intimates often 
means censure, when from strangers it 
would mean merely unconcern. The 

[166] 



THE AREA OF LIFE 

reason we receive our severest wounds 
from our dearest friends is that they 
alone have the power to inflict them. 
'It is not an open enemy that hath 
done me this dishonour, for then I could 
have borne it. . . . But it was even 
thou, my companion, my guide and 
mine own familiar friend.' 

We suffer not the evils that befall 
us, but the implications we infer: we 
take the hurt, not the harm, to heart. 
All unvenomed adversity is damnum 
absque injuria; all unintended injury 
is without offence. As sympathy is 
the supreme help, so mockery is the 
climax of heartlessness ; intelligence, 
with its pointed thrust, fells quicker 
than any brutal buffet of ignorance. 
The real indignities heaped upon Christ 
were not in the immediate view, but in 
the larger vista. Yet the vision that 
incurs the quintessential keenness of 

[167] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

suffering is at the same time out- 
look that derives commensurate com- 
fort: where unseen poignancy assails, 
unseen delectation assuages. At every 
turn superiority both invites a penalty 
and reaps a reward, just as at every 
turn inferiority though finding some- 
thing to console finds also something to 
humiliate. Wider sources of refresh- 
ment belong to the wider field of 
fatigue; the sensitive vibrate to tones 
both above and below the common 
scale of perception. Though the price 
paid by susceptibility is great, it re- 
ceives also an exceeding joy wherewith 
to pay it. 



[168] 



THE INCOGNITO OF THE 
ETERNAL 

THE world contains unideally the 
elements of the ideal. Nothing 
is entirely acceptable; life pre- 
sents itself disproportionately and it is 
for man to adjust the proportions to 
suit. Everywhere the ephemeral and 
trivial protrude through the enduring. 
Goodness is so distributive that per- 
fection can only be collective; there is 
no tenable philosophy or abiding dream 
except an eclecticism of all that does 
not clash. Mass makes good every dis- 
crepancy of part, and in totals is found 
a meaning at which the units had not 
hinted. Truth and beauty pervade all 
things, albeit mixed with much dross; 
it is by virtue of its grain of wisdom that 

[169] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

foolishness abides, of its spark of vital- 
ity that evil persists. The small kernel 
of worth is always found within the 
prickly burr of idiosyncrasies; there 
ripen for us no sweet fruits that do not 
have some harsh core or rough surface 
that are as it were the still unremoved 
scaffold of their creation. Life is at 
best a rich milk — we get the cream only 
by the separator of effort. Experience 
is a small payment on account of per- 
fection. 

We cull good from every encounter 
and reap the normal out of the erratic, 
ill-adjusted world. Success is merely 
the effect total of a thousand defeats. 
Despite every defection at its critical 
moments, every recoil from its great 
task, how smoothly life goes on. Out- 
side the walls of confinement and 
suffering the world still laughs. We 
are amazed that nature can be so beau- 

[170] 



THE INCOGNITO OF THE ETERNAL 

tiful in the face of all our sorrow and 
our sin. Into the very Pincio of sunshine 
floats the carbolic of pain. May not 
the music of the heart be but the sad 
alto that threads its way through a 
larger harmony in which it is itself un- 
heard ? Even now the ear of ideality 
catches strains of life's symphony. How 
miserable the condition of humanity, 
yet how great is man; considering the 
ugliness and imbecility of individuals, 
it is marvellous how orderly and beau- 
tiful in many of its relationships the 
world already is. The orchestra is pro- 
phetic of the completely socialized state 
— what shall not the orchestration of 
mankind finally produce! 

To perceive the symbolism of exist- 
ence is to see it in its integral connec- 
tions ; metaphor is the natural medium 
of insight and therefore the language 
of all large thought. What we make 

[171] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

resound with its fulness of meaning, 
abides; we sublimate the moment by 
discerning its motif. Let us keep life 
constantly at its relevant point: there 
alone are we central where the mind 
feels its radius. No situation presents 
itself that will not if we are keenly alive 
to it stand and deliver a benefit. Un- 
less we wrestle with the immediate, we 
do not wrest from it its blessing; all 
things pass prematurely if without 
profit. 

Did we but give our whole attention 
to the moment and the me, we should 
have great news to tell. Diogenes in 
the sunlight awake, the darky in the 
sunlight asleep, mark respectively the 
zenith and the nadir of existence. 
Truths we have completely felt live 
forever; an occurrence or a situation to 
which we have completely yielded our- 
selves becomes a leaf of classic memory. 

[ 172] 



THE INCOGNITO OF THE ETERNAL 

What an unfading experience is travel 
for the sensitive. As small parks are 
the city's points of self-consciousness, 
so do the hours spent in roaming or 
reflection co-ordinate life. To have 
realized the moment is to have been on 
the mount. Every flight from distrac- 
tion is a Hegira from which the soul 
dates a new epoch. 

How much greater is the occasion's 
yield than any we ever gather from it. 
As there is no experience that by being 
taken aright may not ennoble us, so 
there is no human contact that does 
not afford opportunity to impress upon 
others some beauty of word or deed. 
Life is full of mute instruments of re- 
sponsiveness, tuneless only for lack of 
the awakening touch. It is the glory 
of literature that it lifts from mankind 
the burden of its inarticulateness and 
clears the channels of its emotion. In- 

[173] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

dispensable to the world is every one 
if he but make of his soul a centre of 
high thought, of his hands implements 
of helpful acts. By such conduct may 
we, even according to socialistic stand- 
ards, qualify ourselves up to any favours 
of fortune and feel sure of having ren- 
dered full equivalent for any liveli- 
hood we receive. 

Nothing unworthy survives its de- 
standardization : we rid ourselves of all 
we characterize, and by applying to evil 
the name it deserves set truth straight. 
Men are detained from perfection only 
through oversight of the detention; 
the same observation of faults that, 
applied to others, makes us good critics, 
would, if directed self ward, make us 
creative. Whenever we are so circum- 
stanced as to perceive our defects, we 
amplify ourselves to avoid them. Dis- 
establishment withdraws adventitious 

[174] 



THE INCOGNITO OF THE ETERNAL 

support and puts every structure to its 
own proof. We move instinctively to 
the removal of the admittedly objec- 
tionable: faults generally lurk behind 
some non-confrontation. At the call of 
conscious ignorance comes wisdom: 
the delimitation of knowledge expands 
it. Even vagueness, if it formulates it- 
self, vanishes; and confusion clarifies 
by the mere attempt at statement. 
Just as any dissimulation will cripple 
the entire character, so by self-confes- 
sion our whole value is made available. 
Only those that pierce to the mean- 
ing of things are moved by them, and 
in turn can move others by means of 
them. To seize the idea is to take 
the very citadel of a subject; to per- 
ceive a person's rationale is to possess 
the secret of influencing him. We can- 
not, unless we see the intrinsic, note 
the type, and so be capable of discard- 

[175] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

ing the unessential. It is always neces- 
sary in singling out the salient fact 
to apply insight, exclusion and finally 
emphasis. What fills the universe in 
its detail of elaboration, is in concep- 
tion but an idea, in utterance but a 
word. Comprehensive minds are those 
that can focus perception to a point, 
for only unity can be grasped; the 
mental scene is not describable till it 
contracts to a single impression. The 
preliminary to all artistic treatment of 
experience is the condensation of it. 
Terseness talks : how clear and cool are 
the scant words that issue from the hard 
rock of action. We build for endurance 
with the tight-pressed brick of speech. 
Art pushes behind every sight or 
sound to its secret, behind the sensed 
to the suggested, behind appearance 
to the truth; its search is ever for the 
permanent yet unlocalized, for the fleet- 

[176] 



THE INCOGNITO OF THE ETERNAL 

ing yet not evanescent. It perceives 
the otherwise imperceptible: now here, 
now there, it follows up glimpses of 
elusive beauty. Not all are suscepti- 
ble to messages out of the blue; only 
by those that have the cipher is the 
flash of the mystic heliograph under- 
stood. The world takes note only of 
the obvious — it is for art to make the 
ideal seem so. 

Time enacts the abiding moments of 
eternity: the cleavage of the finite 
shows the grain of the infinite. By 
virtue of some transcendent partici- 
pation is it that the past persists: the 
sacredness of memories bears true tes- 
timony to their character. Though 
there is a definite point of embarkation, 
the sea is boundless, the voyage end- 
less. Implicated in the passing mo- 
ment are more than its fortuitous cir- 
cumstances and mortal actors: among 

[177] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

them moves 'a fourth like unto the son 
of God.' Some enduring element of 
ineffable meaning is infused into the 
transitory, bidding all it touches live. 
Though whole regions of the bygone 
are submerged, yet specific instants 
stand out in single salience; though 
matters of day-in, day-out repetition 
are extinct, some unique experience 
still flashes like a far-off peak in 
the unceasing light of reality. Not 
merely mythical nor yet ended is that 
heroic age in which immortals as- 
sumed the flesh of detail and partici- 
pated in mortal action. Better did 
bards sing the truth than literalists 
now record it. The glory of earth is 
the furnishing of heaven. Epic deeds, 
winged words, illuminating thoughts, 
illustrious scenes, illimitable music — 
these though they happen in time 
dwell in eternity. 

[178] 



MORAL POLARITY 

GROWTH is the natural push of 
being : all advance comes of the 
forward movement of the heart. 
If we but gave ourselves up to our good, 
men would have little to complain of 
our evil. We flower when we flourish. 
As with nations so with individuals, 
progress is chiefly due to the develop- 
ment of natural advantages. Every 
obedience to fundamental impulse ex- 
pands us: on the appearance of our 
power our frailties take themselves 
off. Weeding is but negative garden- 
ing — conscience but a necessary evil. 
To diverge from self-development is to 
cheat both ourselves and the world: 
continual struggle wastes the profita- 

[179] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

bleness of strength. Never mind what 
is not ours, so much as what is; plenty 
can do what we cannot, few what we 
can. Let us leave the little berries of 
difficulty until we have first gathered the 
large refreshing fruit of spontaneity. 

Nature corrects without even so much 
as an admission of error; she restores 
without wrench and destroys without 
waste. By mere emphasis on the beau- 
tiful she obliterates the ugly; by mere 
urgence of the good she blots out the 
bad. Reform, if it were equally wise, 
would spare itself much destructive- 
ness of method. There is no way of 
keeping down the weeds but by a 
sturdier growth. To feel the full load 
of one's faults may give the repentance 
that regrets but not the penitence 
that replaces. Better than upbraiding 
ourselves for wrong is an increased dili- 
gence for right. 

[180] 



MORAL POLARITY 

We pull life further than we push it. 
Though there is a moral prejudice in 
favour of the onerous, efficiency soon 
perceives the error. A higher law bids 
us favour ourselves: the irksome is 
usually the unsuitable. Occasions for 
fortitude or endurance are not to be 
commended merely because the quali- 
ties themselves are: effort is a noise 
that indicates obstruction rather than 
accomplishment. The brawling brook 
of difficulty contests each inch, but 
the brimming river of ease is noise- 
less. 

Out of the indigenous and autoch- 
thonous joy of existence, art derives its 
colour, religion its occasion. Enjoy- 
ment is but cosmic courtesy and a 
very essential to all gratitude. A gay 
heart reassures philosophy and restores 
faith. The only real tragedy in life is 
the failure of its power to please. 

[181] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

The sky of serenity sets all the birds 
of the heart to twittering. You've only 
to hang me in the sun and I'll sing. 
Most musical outpourings of mankind 
come from the mere exhilaration of liv- 
ing : art is without object other than to 
be and to express itself. The delightful 
days are prolific: we are exalted when 
we exult. The age of chivalry was the 
age of the troubadours ; but in the sor- 
did struggle of existence beauty is 
strangled, the song is silenced. Juice- 
less are the fruits of labour unless 
ripened in the sunlight of love; ex- 
istence that is forced develops a pale 
growth and lacks the fine flavour of 
refreshment. How can we confer pleas- 
ure unless we receive it ? What we do 
without joy gives none. 

We produce our best with the least 
exertion : our debt to the world is paid 
in the choice crop of our soul's leisure- 

[182] 



MORAL POLARITY 

orchard. Men urge themselves need- 
lessly; the horse is not for the purpose 
to which it must be spurred. What re- 
quires me to hurry or otherwise unduly 
strive, is not mine. The rough road of 
uncongenialness consumes twice the 
gasoline of effort. We are exhausted 
quicker by our incompetence than by 
our competence : unworthy trifles spend 
us more than the utmost practice of 
our powers. If men were placed with 
the same advantage to their abilities, 
their differing degrees of efficiency 
would largely disappear. It is not the 
equal fight that wears us out, but the 
frequency with which we are forced to 
call up our reserves against overwhelm- 
ing odds. The body gives way not 
under its own weight but under the 
mind's burden. 

Our heavily-laden branches hang 
low; we must condescend if we would 

[183] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

perceive or pluck. We fall to our 
safety and sink to our heights. It 
seems to require dire necessity to force 
our blessings upon us; men turn to 
salvation only in extremis. Relish is 
always an index because a concomi- 
tant of efficiency ; when freshness flags, 
strength has already flagged — fatigue 
both averts and replenishes exhaustion. 
How much time we lose trying to cure 
our lame thoughts instead of fostering 
our agile ones. The pure ore of our 
value is reduced at lowest cost; let 
us devote our energy to development 
of the high-grade self rather than 
expend it upon the reduction of our 
tailings. The point is not to deal with 
our default so much as fully and expe- 
ditiously to bring forth our abundance. 
The very disqualification here is a certifi- 
cation there: the over-sensitiveness or 
over-carefulness that is ruinous in one 

[184] 



MORAL POLARITY 

pursuit is the very prerequisite to suc- 
cess in another. It is not incumbent 
upon us to make gifts save out of our 
surplus: what is not ours in profusion 
mankind will get from others better. 
Enough if we render to God the things 
that are God's. 

Spiritual wealth devolves the greater 
trusteeship upon us, because the bene- 
fit of its distribution is greater. Let us 
not withhold ourselves: the distant or 
reserved attitude is a selfish monopoly, 
but when we behave sincerely and open- 
ly toward all, we share whatever priv- 
ilege we have received. Merely by 
mixing among men, the cultured, the 
right-minded raise the general level. 
The multiplication of beautiful souls 
is the only propagation that increases 
life. Those who further the race, 
father it and become the true patri- 
archs. 

[185] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

Action is happy only when uncon- 
strained: though the compulsion be 
but that of convention, it is still slavery. 
To prescribe is usually to proscribe and 
finally to banish. Care constricts at the 
stem and withers our foliage; conven- 
tionality plucks the rose of nature and 
binds it into a mere bouquet. Better 
freedom that deprives us of much, than 
any advantage that pinches. The heart 
is no beast of burden but a spirited 
steed; full of fire when given its head, 
it becomes in harness but a dejected 
jade. 

Let us live toward the blossom, not 
toward the root. Self-consciousness is 
a lesion of the mind : we do not notice 
our machinery till it is out of order; 
when the wheels of activity overheat 
their axle, they must be stopped. The 
subjective plummet reaches no great 
depth: observation is cork to the 

[186] 



MORAL POLARITY 

waters of self. Normalness never knows 
its processes; the best cooks cannot 
say how they do it. Any surveillance 
of inspiration cuts off its supply. Even 
the technique of art, though a cultiva- 
tion and not an instinct, has no ease 
till it becomes instinctive. 

Power paws the very air with eager- 
ness. Our entire strength can never 
be enlisted by any insincerity; con- 
scription is ever an uncertain soldier. 
We indite self only with the stilus of 
delight: to be spiritually graphic re- 
quires the white heat of intensity. All 
joy blows a clear tone ; but disquietude 
gives a troubled sound. To be listless 
is to botch. Happiness has strict home- 
stead laws: the soul obtains title to no 
more than it can duly circumscribe and 
dwell upon. Lands we do not effect- 
ively occupy are not ours. 

Life cannot leap except from the 

[187] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

spring-board of its facility. God 
counts on instinct ; implied in the plant- 
ing is the intention to reap. We can- 
not long drag the anchor-chain of tem- 
perament; youth soon gives up the 
unequal contest; we become content 
to climb at a lower gear. It is in ap- 
parent accordance with cosmic arrange- 
ment that the harvesting of innate 
motives should give the best results. 
Herewith it is impious for conscien- 
tiousness to clash. Things function- 
ally necessary are no field for asceti- 
cism; we are not morally safe if 
any perennial stream of instinct be 
dammed up. Unless allowed its course, 
life will not keep its banks. It does 
not comport with spiritual hygiene to 
leave any great longing unsatisfied. 
The pent-up fury of nature stands ever 
ready to flood the lands below sea- 
level and convert them into a very Sal- 

[188] 



MORAL POLARITY 

ton Sea of waste. Most abnormalities 
are caused by the suppression of some 
legitimate demand, by some blockade 
of being. In private as in public con- 
duct, general liberty prevents singular- 
ity. Where all tendencies find free 
expression, no one of them can assume 
undue prominence or go to an extreme ; 
for beyond its proportional part or out- 
side its fitting place, no object, no pur- 
suit is either defensible or attractive: 
in the presence of totality all that is 
overgrown or misshapen slinks out of 
sight. By distributing privilege de- 
mocracy replaces revolution by am- 
bition and conservatism. Bondage 
breaks every bound, but freedom brings 
its own check: though form may be 
lifeless, life is not formless. Courtesy 
is but the beaten track of kindness. 
The very conventions that cramp one 
person may expand another — accom- 

[189] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

modation to custom varies in spiritual 
meaning with the individual. What is 
mere etiquette to the boor is occasion 
to the considerate ; what to beneficence 
is expression, to selfishness is repres- 
sion. The right finds in the natural 
form its fullest freedom. 

The identification of duty with hap- 
piness is the true commencement of 
our career. Not till then is the fight 
won, the era of might begun. We fail 
of accomplishment only because in- 
terest does not take hold. Where en- 
thusiasm and occupation meet, there is 
the compatible marriage of mind to 
matter in which beautiful thoughts are 
born and great deeds cradled. To de- 
light in the ordinary and therefore in- 
alienable incidents of existence is the 
safeguard of moral health; no one is 
proof against undoing unless these af- 
ford him satisfaction. As emotion is 

[ 190] 



MORAL POLARITY 

stronger than reason, so is love of right 
more reliable than any compunction. 
Goodness is a tropic that owes its cli- 
mate to the greater prevalence of sun. 
If unshorn of its natural attractiveness 
and temptations righteousness is irre- 
sistible. There is no happier moment 
nor one more confirmatory of faith than 
when first we are convinced that duty 
is not synonymous with denial but with 
fulfilment; that wrong is not pleasant 
but that right is; and that thus the 
seeming irreconcilability of motives is 
non-existent, our dilemma unreal, our 
confidence in spiritual unity unstrained. 
All consistent activities are uncon- 
sciously moral, for morality in the 
last analysis means better method. 
Health is a dog that swims instinctively 
in the waters of duty. Other virtues 
besides honesty are the best policy : the 
modern developments of trade verge on 

[ 191 J 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

and merge into philanthropy: adver- 
tisement, largely conceived, turns into 
real helpfulness. Though commerce 
is unsesthetic in aim, it cannot in some 
of its aspects avoid lending itself to 
beauty. The trend of intelligence is 
toward righteousness; at the door of 
error or ignorance is to be laid most of 
the world's wrong. Stupidity makes for 
mischief more than all the machinations 
of the wicked, just as it is the dull 
edge not the keen that leaves the ugly 
wound. How often does not the nearly 
averted tragedy slip through the ringers 
of some weak though willing Pilate. 

When moral codes depart too far from 
the quick proof of expediency and from 
discernible consequences of welfare, 
they get beyond gauge or influence. 
In the tremblors of fate the close- 
clutching bungalow of reality fares 
better than structures of pretension. 

[ 192 ] 



MORAL POLARITY 

Ethics must not lose sight or accentua- 
tion of the prosaic cogency out of which 
the fine flower of its sanctity grows. 
The primitive commandments were 
also promulgations of health and public 
policy. When too attenuated of self- 
evidence, precepts cease to compel: 
no sanction can endure an over-long 
suspension, but requires a visible vest- 
ing in fact. If in the moral world the 
statute against perpetuities had been 
more rigorously enforced, fewer soul- 
strangling codes and customs had been 
fastened upon mankind. 

The pleasurableness of primary func- 
tions is an augury that their elabora- 
tion should be of like character. Since 
it was necessary for their perpetuation 
and for our protection that instincts 
should be made inviting, the same 
necessity is predicable of that develop- 
ment of them which constitutes the 

[193] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

complex conduct of to-day. The mere 
expansion of existence does not alter 
the character of its emphasis upon 
right. If life is allowed to become 
joyless, nature's very beacon-light of 
guidance is frustrated and lost. The 
agreeable is prima facie the good; 
upon its denial lies the burden of proof. 
The evidence by which civilization has 
sustained this burden constitutes mo- 
rality. Conscience comes in only at the 
point of our own self-conflict. There 
is reason for everything that there is 
no reason against, and restriction has 
always to justify itself; inquisitorial 
ethics must first establish jurisdiction. 
Function makes out its case — it is for 
reason to rebut. When unperverted, 
the dictates of desire are directions of 
health : our wishes point to our welfare. 
To obey the impulses of freshness and 
fatigue — to act, to vary, to cease, in con- 

[194] 



MORAL POLARITY 

formity with the ebb and flow of zest 
— all this keeps us keen in feeling and 
action. Duty has many directing voices 
and that of happiness is the most au- 
thoritative; we characterize well the 
apt thought as a happy one. Pleasure 
and pain are the potent formative in- 
fluences because instinctive and imme- 
diate in application. It is not by fol- 
lowing proprieties and time-cards and 
itineraries that large purposes effectu- 
ate themselves, but by natural self-se- 
quences: conscience should be the au- 
tomatic brake that stops the car of 
action only when it gets detached from 
the train of normal impulse. Every- 
thing enacted by the commons of the 
moment, as restrained by the senate 
of the mind and the constitutionality 
of the heart, is lawful. 

Nature restores to us the latitude 
of which a straitened formalism de- 

[195] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

prived us. What has man done that 
he must forfeit the gladness bestowed 
upon his fellow-creatures of the ani- 
mate world ? Creation produces its 
great opus not through criticism, but 
through love — not through thwarting, 
but through pleasing itself. To such 
an extent is creativeness an affair of 
self-realization that in the name — though 
to the shame — of art its ignoble disciples 
grow not merely sensuous, but sensual. 
Men become set in their ways when 
they have discovered the demands of 
their genius. The skilled mariner holds 
to the uttermost on the long leg of the 
tack. We go by our feelings once we 
have learned the deeper wisdom out 
of which these speak, and seen the 
safety of their leading. The more we 
understand ourselves the more we hu- 
mour self and therefore the more it 
yields us: when we do as we please 

[ 196] 



MORAL POLARITY 

we are headed the right way, and there- 
after go forward; with normal natures 
sic itur ad astra. A sound and un- 
trammelled heart is the secret of suc- 
cess and happiness. 



[197] 



RESPONSIVENESS 

WHATEVER is sibylline to the 
mood is sacred. The nature 
and importance of things is 
determined for each one by his reac- 
tion upon them. We owe ourselves to 
the experiences that develop us, no 
matter how otherwise adverse; men 
often benefit us quite against their in- 
tention. All that keys perception or 
tunes thought, instrumentalizes us ; only 
he is to me musician who pulls out the 
stops of my soul. 

Our friends fulfil themselves up to 
our responsiveness. As the palms and 
flowers of Italy advertise an unfelt 
clemency in the wintry air, even so 
praise makes one conscious of hitherto 
unrecognized merits. Traits slough off 

[198] 



RESPONSIVENESS 

if sympathy stops ; men finally lose faith 
in what their fellows cannot see. When 
an influential personality sets, the whole 
domain of experience for which it stood 
seems to go out of existence. Though 
the least censure makes one inwardly 
plead guilty to a general worthlessness, 
yet if the w^orld pat him on the back, 
though for a trifle, every fault at once 
appears venial. It is noticeable that 
under the sunshine of adulation success- 
ful men become genial: life, because a 
continual laudation of themselves, seems 
a continual approbation of others. To 
such an extent may character be awak- 
ened to any response demanded of it, 
that upon its unoccupied tracts 'Will 
build to suit tenant' might be dis- 
played. Mistrust always hampers, but 
appreciation brings out new powers. 

Our attitude is returned to us com- 
pounded: if we treat others humanly, 

[199] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

they treat us angelically; if inhumanly, 
they treat us diabolically. Violence is 
a bludgeon and provokes violence in 
return, but considerateness gains the 
opponents' favour. It is not poverty 
and depravity that foment revolution 
so much as the bitterness engendered 
by their treatment. Leave stomachs 
sick for food and there will be con- 
sequences that make the stomach sick 
for fear. Society does not realize the 
provocation there is for those that feel 
the hand of the world against them. 
We change men little by convicting 
them; but once convinced they change 
themselves. When the heart melts, it 
moves. Reasonableness wins all men 
to its side: a considerate majority has 
the minority's support, a magnanimous 
government consolidates the country. 
We draw out the kindness of those 
against whom we do not defend our- 

[200] 



RESPONSIVENESS 

selves; from an enemy, the better our 
argument the less our justice, but let 
him do you some harm and you con- 
vert him. It is according to others' 
need of us that we give ourselves; 
many friendships are founded on pity. 
To such as seek mercy or forgiveness, 
the whole generosity of our nature goes 
out. 

Every one raises or lowers the level 
of faith in all about him; by improv- 
ing ourselves we increase the value of 
all contiguous property. When we 
live beautifully, we beautify the scene 
and comply with the aesthetic demands 
of our environment. Any deep inter- 
course reveals the standards we are to 
meet and are expected to satisfy. There 
are books that begin new epochs in 
our lives. Men track what they tread: 
a good act is a propaganda fidei and 
spreads belief in God. All excellence 

[201] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

is a divine revelation, all hardness of 
heart teaches universal godlessness; 
the course of the world is felt to be a 
reflection upon the mind that animates 
it. There is no such moral menace to 
the community as to permit a seeming 
inversion of the issues of good and evil 
— to leave the reward of right outward- 
ly unaccentuated but that of evil ob- 
vious. If the practical value of virtue 
be denied, it is difficult to retain a 
sense of its infinite worth. Every ad- 
dition to human greatness endows man 
with a more distinguished name. Let 
us be lofty and clear of clouds, for men 
look up to us, the years look back to 
us. 



[202] 



PROPORTION 

THE processes of the mind are little 
affected by the media in which it 
works. Unaltered are the prob- 
lems of existence whether to their 
statement the three zeros of sublimity 
be added or not; of whatever units ex- 
perience may be composed its propor- 
tions remain very much the same. 
Everything we treat commercially is 
merchandise : to the huckster his flow- 
ers are but a weariness and a burden. 
It is no more idealistic to traffic in 
pomegranates than in potatoes; no 
lighter are the griefs of life in Italy 
than where we are. The fortunate 
and the unfortunate are equally be- 
set with perplexities and vexations. 
Clouds of trouble come up with the 

[203] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

sun of joy and rob us of its sunshine. 
We do not get so much more as we 
imagined when we lick the platter of 
happiness. Every choice imposes the 
penalty of some negation; to be freed 
of fear and dread is to be deprived of 
the great pleasures of relief and reas- 
surance. How manv a successful man 
has wished back the old days of his 
poverty or obscurity. 

Life's altitudes are of slow discrimi- 
nation: all hills are alike high that 
reach the clouds. Others impress us 
unduly by a knowledge which we do 
not possess: for being ourselves igno- 
rant of a subject we impute to them a 
larger familiarity with it than is actual- 
ly theirs. The reason why men of 
ability appear to us exaggeratedly ca- 
pable is that we suppose them to be 
what they are in addition to what we 
are, instead of, as is usually the case, 

[204] 



PROPORTION 

simply in lieu of it. Goodness, if mere- 
ly glimpsed, is imagined as indefin- 
itely extensive : the great seem unlimit- 
edly so. All coins are current where 
the credit is once established: ordinary 
phrases are quoted from the well-known 
pen. Let us but speak a brave word 
or do a brave deed and we are forever 
after lauded for our little ones. Though 
usually excluded at law, evidence of 
general reputation is admissible in life 
— and counts for too much. One pict- 
ures another's present condition as he 
does his own past, namely, with the 
disagreeables left out. We see the 
glory and renown of great achieve- 
ment and are tempted to wish them for 
ourselves ; little, however, do we realize 
what denials and struggles they exact 
— never do men know what they ask 
when they would be first in the king- 
dom of heaven. The illustrious career 

[205] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

gives small outward hint of its inward 
rigour: to laugh with the sun means 
also to weep with the rain, to faint with 
the heat, to freeze with the cold. Be- 
fore we covet the ends let us make sure 
that we covet the means as well. Envy 
is curable by even a small dose of life: 
experience soon contents one with his 
own by minimizing all else. 

The world rates us according to 
the magnitude of our affairs; but our 
own size is independent of theirs and 
due to the way we deal with them. 
Littleness of character is not necessa- 
rily cured by the enlargement of our 
lot, nor innate largeness lessened by 
straitened circumstances: though the 
periphery of experience increases, our 
particular segment of it subtends no 
wider angle of outlook. It is mainly the 
same qualities that, according to their 
sphere of application, pass for distin- 

[206] 



PROPORTION 

guished or ordinary. The commanding 
features of the landscape owe their 
grandeur to position: mountains are 
but every-day earth that would claim no 
attention but for its fortuitous elevation; 
the great waters would excite little ad- 
miration were they otherwise dispersed. 
In energy expended rather than in 
result accomplished lies the true meas- 
ure of labour: failure ofttimes works 
harder than success, and weariness 
may bring nothing but discourage- 
ment. Life is not an affair of fixed 
magnitudes but of relative effects. 
Alike beautiful are the shadows on the 
lawn and the sun-pools in the woods; 
grateful after glare is the rain. The in- 
dex of our pleasure lies not in the gift, 
but in its relation to our wish ; how little 
dependent upon the scale of living is 
the happiness of life. We are as much 
moved by the sweet vale as by the stu- 

[207] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

pendous valley: the suggestivenessof the 
scene is due to its modulation more than 
to its measure. From Venetian quays, 
it is not to the towering Alps that the 
eye turns with delight but rather to the 
dreamy outline of the Euganean Hills. 

The differences of condition among 
men have not the unfairness that would 
appear. One thinks of the wealthy and 
well-liking as having first choice in 
everything, and others as putting up 
with whatever is left; but in point of 
fact the second choice best suits the 
second chooser. We soon come to see 
that the world in general is astonish- 
ingly well accommodated. Suitability 
is a tactful master of ceremonies. All 
qualities find their affinities at last; 
and even inferiority is content for it 
prefers the inferior. 

Everywhere the constant kindness of 
life is apparent if one but studies the 

[208] 



PROPORTION 

workings of compensation whereby in 
essential conditions a universal equality 
is effected. Insight makes us not only 
'without hope to rise' but equally 
'without fear to fall': the turn of 
fortune contains no terror. Though we 
note the apparently disproportionate 
price that one person must pay for the 
same thing that another obtains free, we 
note also that the value of it is to each 
of them accordingly, and so no injus- 
tice committed. The cruelty of exter- 
nals is neutralized by the mercifulness 
of our reaction upon them. Whatever 
we adapt ourselves to, we adopt and 
make ours: accommodation is a shel- 
ter in which there is always room for 
us. Every man unconsciously, the wise 
man intentionally, tempers standards to 
his shorn condition. Only what strikes 
below the belt of our philosophy fells 
us; submission, like a fort of palmetto 

[209] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

logs, lets all cannon-shot of circum- 
stance sink in harmlessly. The inevi- 
table calls out man's great docility; 
the waters of assimilation round in 
their current all edges of difficulty and 
smooth the surface of all stones of 
hardship. Happiness is democratic 
and reserves a place for every one in 
the joyful republic of living. 

The full sail of favour easily jibes, but 
when beating close-hauled against ad- 
versity we can always come up quickly 
into the wind of safety. Those in hum- 
ble station have a monopoly of as many 
advantages as they forego. Theirs is 
an unmortgaged enjoyment that cannot 
be foreclosed. The great world must 
bow and smirk and dance the quadrille 
of honour: only the obscure have the 
privilege of their own mood. The 
motor-car of idleness seems to cover 
with the dust of inferiority those that 

[210] 



PROPORTION 

trudge along the way — it is by them 
alone, however, that the roadside is ap- 
preciated. Small lives like small towns 
live centrally to their best, while metro- 
politan existence, though it contains 
more, has it at greater remove. Any 
conspicuousness restrains liberty; the 
sight-seer becomes himself the sight. 
Prominence deprives us of the undis- 
torted truth: we cannot see aright if 
lifted too far above the scene. No 
duty that privilege imposes is fully paid 
for by the gratification it bestows: 
when others equal or surpass us in 
any excellence we may well be glad 
that they divide with us its responsi- 
bilities. All knowledge makes one in- 
creasingly answerable: where enjoy- 
ment may be had without ownership, 
it is preferable — beyond that, posses- 
sion is onerous. One gets the most out 
of life from the least that gives it: a 

[211] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

little confers all without its care. 
Money is useful only for spiritual spend- 
ing and material saving: its sole ad- 
vantage lies in the opportunity to for- 
get it, and so to be free. 

In darkness the light of the heart 
shines bright: deprivation reveals our 
true wealth, as a confession of one's 
ignorance brings his wisdom into re- 
lief. Always when fortune waxes we 
fret over some niggardliness in its 
generosity; but when it wanes we re- 
joice that it is not worse. No sky 
seems so fair as one in which some 
storm is remotely brewing; no scene 
so alluring as one suddenly disclosed 
through a break in the clouds. Re- 
flections that assuage sorrow are very 
likely to dampen joy, as a coloured 
glass that beautifies the ugly, perverts 
beauty: the trees protect us from the 
rain, yet give us their own shower 

[212] 



PROPORTION 

later on. How sordid-looking the sun- 
shine of prosperity makes surroundings 
that but now against the background 
of adversity seemed so delightful. 
Praise only unsettles us and sends us 
overweeningly in search of unsatisfying 
external sanctions; but by criticism we 
are driven to the sources of inner ap- 
proval. All realization checks motive; 
under excess of incentive the mind 
wavers. 

The proportions of life favour the 
poor. None but the simple can face 
the world with sincerity: mankind ad- 
monishes the wealthy at every turn. 
No less unhappy is it to be exposed 
to envy than to feel it; luxury must 
withdraw itself within deep parks of 
selfishness and hide itself behind strong 
gateways of privacy, lest it suffer some 
contact — and therefore confront some 
contrast— that would accuse it of in- 

[213] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

humanity. The higher the temperature 
of prosperity, the colder is the current 
of uneasiness that draws through the 
closed windows of its outlook. 

The real miseries of man are not those 
into which either misfortune or want 
plunges him, but those due to his own 
perverseness. It is only the superfluities 
of life that impose its load: on every 
hand our dissatisfaction and greed com- 
mit us to the defensive of happiness. 
We plant causes whose consequences 
we must combat, and become involved 
in an altercation with nature. Desire 
spurs us on to dangers from which 
safety shrinks. Everywhere we en- 
counter the contradictions of our re- 
quirements and the penalties of our 
pleasures. The sweets that delight 
bring the flies that annoy; the food 
that fattens tempts the rats that infest. 
Riches attract envious eyes and sur- 

[214] 



PROPORTION 

round with false friends. At the height 
of the revelry we are struck miserable. 

To excel is a source of sadness as 
well as of pride. From ambitiously 
seeking to equal our superiors, we find 
ourselves at last regretfully and vainly 
seeking even our equals. Most posi- 
tion is due to mere survivorship and is 
therefore tinged with loneliness. It is 
always a shock to discover that those 
to whom we looked for information are 
themselves looking up to us as au- 
thorities. More entrancing is the pros- 
pect of the sea across the gardens and 
palaces of the great than from the 
shore itself. We forfeit the foreground 
by advancing. 

Things are true only on the plane of 
life that saw or said them. How deli- 
cious under the awning is the summer 
day, yet how fierce is its glare. The 

glorious cloud-banks of sunset, what 

[ 215 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

are they when reached but mere mist ? 
Mountains sink as we climb them: 
the imposing dwindles as we draw near. 
When our dreams come true, we wish 
back our dreams. Far happier is it to 
fall short of our ideals than to have 
none ; to disobev God than to disbelieve 
in Him. Portless is the sail that looks 
for no Atlantis of the western wave. 



[ 2 16 ] 



SPONTANEITY 

TO feel restraint is equivalent to 
being bound: freedom is senti- 
mental and not confined to fact. 
With men as with cattle it makes no 
difference that the stake to which they 
are tethered is unsubstantial. The 
mere indifference of others is disap- 
proval; their disapproval, opposition. 
Our peace of mind becomes entan- 
gled in the web of their subjectivity. 
The point of view of uncongenial per- 
sons makes us as wretched as their lot 
would. All influence is infectious and 
menaces our spiritual independence. 
A commanding personality is a dicta- 
torship. 

No one can altogether escape the 
colour and idiom of his conscious en- 

[ 217 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

vironment. It is difficult not to weigh 
truth and beauty in the scales of 
acceptability rather than of intrinsic 
worth; the patronage that mere wealth 
bestows upon art degrades it. Conven- 
tional standards and usages are an in- 
fringement of personal liberty. The 
injection of a thought inimical to our 
mood scatters us and it is long before 
we find ourselves again; our mental 
life is at the mercy of whoever accosts 
us. What such intrusive impertinence 
as another's unsolicited recital of his 
experiences ? At all points self is ex- 
posed to assault. The relevancies of 
speech divert from the relevancies of 
thought: a false note is an invasion. 
The surreptitious intermediacy of ap- 
proach enjoyed by letters, advertise- 
ments, the telegraph, the telephone, 
procures for them a privilege of ac- 
cess denied to personal interview, just 

[218] 



SPONTANEITY 

as out-of-town friends obtain a prece- 
dence of attention. Of every congested 
life the problem is how to maintain 
a detached personality; simply to sup- 
ply the soul with fresh air is become a 
feat of spiritual engineering. 

Not until we get beyond the range of 
others is the cohesive gravitation of our 
own sphere felt. The strong lead their 
life alone, and fraternize only toward 
evening; but weakness assembles and 
talks. The sole neutrality is to keep 
at arm's length. Admit guests and you 
admit silent critics; to appeal to others 
is to give them a right to reprove. By 
protracted companionship with those of 
a different age we forfeit our own ; long 
association with the elderly limits our 
powers to their outlook. Every in- 
capable person casts a spell of incapac- 
ity over us. 

Crowding kills. Unwittingly we are 

[219] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

drawn into the whirlpool of lives about 
us ; all contact invites participation — we 
cannot remain impassive if we observe. 
Exclusiveness is the only park of broad 
acres in which one may live spaciously: 
wherever I am alone is a study and a 
temple. In the press of surroundings 
we become mere conglomerates; but 
left to ourselves we cut out slabs of 
our own stone. Nature loves her vast 
tracts of vacancy and summons forth 
from them her tonic forces. Space is 
the wide range of the spheres and the 
open speedway of light; far out upon 
the boundless seas, deep in the track- 
less forests, solitude recharges the ex- 
hausted breath of mankind with life- 
giving energy. 

Amid close contacts the mind is kept 
ever on the defensive. The fear of 
interruption is interruption. It is im- 
possible to be with men and remain 

[220] 



SPONTANEITY 

uninfluenced by their opinion of us. 
The surrounding atmosphere of ex- 
pectation depresses the barometer of 
our spontaneity: all opinion is an un- 
due influence, all criticism duress. The 
greater our individuality the more res- 
tive are we under external trammels 
upon it, because the more in need of 
conditions that encourage and foster 
self-assertion. No strong legs will en- 
dure the swa things of convention; the 
wings of every fledged soul beat them- 
selves free. 



[221] 



PROGRESSION 

INITIATIVE is a new creation and 
founds fresh dynasties of energy. 
None can foresee the efflorescence 
of his dream or the fruitage of his act. 
To awaken thought is to arouse the 
whole mind: the wide country-side of 
the soul harkens to the crowing of any 
chanticleer. Whatsoever takes form 
in consciousness quickly receives the 
breath of life; the pioneer thought is 
the vanguard of all improvement. 
Every act of strength makes us strong; 
industry, once will, is soon habit. 
The knee of power gives way from dis- 
use more than from weakness. Unless 
lived to their limit capacities do not in- 
crease; we make room for our waiting 

[222] 



PROGRESSION 

potentialities only by disposing of our 
actualities. Continuous disappointment 
is in store for mere expectancy, but 
effort meets continuous reward. The 
incentive as well as the strength comes 
through performance; let us think no 
more about our duties but simply do 
them. 

Every advance forces us further: we 
move with gathering momentum along 
our way. The reason one is committed 
to what he begins is that he is led on 
by it; some false shame of inconsis- 
tency keeps one to his purpose. 
Course and destination are often de- 
termined by the mere accidental di- 
rection of start. As every hurt seems 
to go straight to a sensitive spot, so 
every step is a fresh impetus to the 
mood in which we find ourselves. All 
influences when reinforced by con- 
sciousness become cumulative; con tin - 

[223] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

uation is a kitten to the thread of our 
thought. Perpetual motion seems ap- 
proximated where spiritual reaction is 
involved. Though all the material uni- 
verse whirls to a finish and vibrates to 
a stop, spiritual vitality goes on un- 
diminished and conscious existence be- 
comes ever more expansive. It would 
seem as if the full-grown soul were to 
sit upon the ruins of the world about 
it and to dwell amid static gravitation 
and shadowless day. 

Most selections are determined by 
accidents of contiguity. We do not ex- 
ercise discretion as often as we think: 
fate picks our favourites the while we 
believe ourselves backing fancy. Our 
preferences prove little but our poverty 
of choice; when other suitors appear, 
constancy is shaken. All popularity is 
fickle and runs after the last arrival; 
seasonal resorts are frequented simply 

[224] 



PROGRESSION 

in default of genialness elsewhere, and 
become deserted again as soon as the 
ice melts or the sun cools. Even be- 
neath conditions most likely to be se- 
lective, the workings of necessity are 
detected. The friendships, the envi- 
ronment of persons apparently having 
the world to choose from, furnish a 
continual surprise to such as do not 
perceive the special requirement of 
disposition finding in them its satisfac- 
tion or response. In the matter of sur- 
roundings, more controlling than all 
other considerations of suitability are 
the needs of our own self-establish- 
ment; there is no such attractiveness 
in others as their admiration of us. It 
is these personal exigencies that not 
only restrict our judgment but conceal 
our fickleness. Under an unlimited 
range of election neither prejudice nor 
loyalty could long survive. Were men 

[225] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

absolutely free to choose and free to 
change, all individual adhesion, all so- 
cial cohesion would cease, all organ- 
ization fall asunder. 

How wide a difference in practice 
is split by a small difference in theory; 
scarcely perceptible in origin, how soon 
is not direction all determinative ! With 
utmost difficulty must we later reach 
the road which but now at its divergence 
offered itself as freely as the one we 
followed. Sweet at the lips is every dish 
of delight — careless of consequence, 
however, beyond the senses' palate. 
There is in every new experience some 
accompaniment which we take to be 
characteristic and continuing, yet which 
merely ushers it in and then retires. 
The syrup that invites, entraps; the 
sunlight that attracts, betrays. Few 
routes preserve throughout the char- 
acter of their beginning. In the easy- 

[226] 



PROGRESSION 

chair of indulgence we grow stoop- 
shouldered, but the unsupported soul 
sits straight. It is our sins that age us 
— our self-denials keep us young. 

For maladjustments defeat is the 
only thorough-going cure: to patch up 
a basic mistake is but the more plain- 
ly to reveal the fundamental botch. 
Fate is kinder to us than favour; dis- 
cipline is not indifference to suffering 
but simply an agreement with nature's 
preferences. Unhappiest those with 
the will but not the courage for evil. 
Denial as well as satisfaction stills sense 
and quiets the soul; each instant raises 
a question between expression or re- 
pression. Experience, the expert whip, 
drives the whole self upon the threefold 
rein of urgence, of consent, of restraint. 
As nature purifies itself by periodic 
winters of extermination, so without 
the correctional cold of disfavour, our 

[227] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

inner growth would become riotous and 
beget fearsome creatures of the soul. 
It is the killing frosts of fate that keep 
down both the exuberance of life and 
the putrefactions of death, maintaining 
the moral air sweet and wholesome. 

The application of truth to our 
individual experience oft-times meets 
with a reception far different from that 
of its general statement; we find assent 
to principle not necessarily carrying 
with it in our own case consent to its 
particularizations. This is the moral 
enigma which, however philosophy may 
explain, it cannot explain away. Self 
is cloven to the core and clashes. The 
internal fight is on, whatever we may 
say about it or however dub its warring 
factions. Whether it be good versus 
evil, knowledge versus ignorance, pru- 
dence versus pleasure, Ormuzd versus 
Ahriman, God versus the devil — it is 

[228] 



PROGRESSION 

all one in outcome, extinction to the 
worsted self-half. Reason when un- 
rivalled rules; but once treason raises 
its head, so evenly are the contending 
forces matched, that the issue turns 
upon the allies called in. The doctrine 
of original sin is no confession of hu- 
man depravity but rather an honest 
admission of man's radical warfare. 
From the mystery of internal antag- 
onism, the marvel of our sedition and 
civil war, the April weather struggle 
between fair and foul, the mortal con- 
flict between desire and duty, no mere 
moralizing can set us free. The fatal- 
ities of the feud are spread before us — 
we are left to account for them as best 
we may. 

Even the skirmishes cost their dead 
and wounded ; we fall no less gloriously 
though in a small fight. Already on 
the preliminary motions of life is the 

[229] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

final judgment foreshadowed. Each 
moment is reaping the reward or pay- 
ing the penalty of some predecessor. 
We ourselves evoke whatever reception 
we meet with. The ease of later years 
is the earned increment of early strug- 
gle; the difficulties are the third and 
fourth generation of early skulking. 
Large is the wealth of him that gathers 
his whole harvest; per contra, from 
every evil act, from all bad work- 
manship go out causative ripples in 
every direction unceasingly — some- 
where in existence, in others or in our- 
selves, a resultant ill moves on. No 
one can slight performance without 
entailing upon the posterity of time a 
long inheritance of discouragement, re- 
sulting in some set-back to character, 
some retardation of mankind. How 
can we drowse with the crises of life, 
the crisis of death, still ahead ! Worlds 

[230] 



PROGRESSION 

are whirling to carry out the creative 
design, while we sit twirling our 
thumbs. The issues of destiny are 
fought out upon a series of viewless, 
bloodless battle-fields: in a succession 
of apparently inconsiderable reconnais- 
sances the stake of happiness is lost or 
won. Though we avert consequences 
that are outward, the inward still 
register themselves beyond reach and 
determine our spiritual occupancy; 
were conscience silenced, the remon- 
strant stomach, the depleted pulse, the 
joyless heart would nevertheless speak 
out. It is forever amazing that we 
can treat so slightingly the arbiters 
of all that is to come — that we 
are so little concerned to make our- 
selves good company, seeing that we 
have got to endure it. There is no 
one whom we so eagerly seek or so 
incontinently flee as ourselves: from 

[231] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

the fearful imprisonment of personal- 
ity there is no escape but in self-expan- 
sion. More quickly and easily do we 
surround ourselves with the qualities 
we like by living them than by seeking 
friends who possess them. We dwell 
with the beautiful by mere dwelling 
upon it; such companionship is not 
only the end and object of all things, 
but is itself the means thereto. 

The shoulders broaden to their bur- 
den: capability comes only when sum- 
moned. When we consider our powers 
we have none, but when we consider 
the need we are omnipotent. The 
things we accomplish are not so much 
those of which we are capable as 
those of which we think ourselves ca- 
pable. The demands of others de- 
velop us: incumbency itself fits for 
office. Spiritual as well as physical 
nature abhors a vacuum: the soul, like 

[232] 



PROGRESSION 

the air, expands to its contiguous space. 
He that obeys the call has the per- 
formance in him already. 

Nothing is so difficult but that in- 
tervening events lead up to it: each 
moment uncovers the motive for the 
next. We do what we cannot through 
doing what we can; every plug of hin- 
drance pulled is followed by a rush of 
thought and action. Even to have de- 
liberated without result or striven with- 
out avail endows us with new capacity. 
In plucking the one berry we see an- 
other: the reach shows us the rest. 
Just as by virtue of survivorship each 
generation in turn becomes vested with 
the world's wealth and honours, so all 
right experience enjoys a continuous 
accession of power and importance. 

One is alternately elated and aghast 
to find how far the current of the years 
has carried him. The weakness we 

[233] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

humoured fulfils all we feared from it. 
But strength drifts down the stream to 
the sea and soon dispenses with the 
harbour-tug and drops the pilot, and all 
its lumbering helplessness is quickly 
turned by the fresh breeze of oppor- 
tunity into seaworthiness. 



[234] 



THE CHIMES OF EXISTENCE 

IT is well that nothing abides or we 
could not abide it; things are little 
more transient than their power to 
please. Upon the table of spiritual 
relish no dish may appear more than 
once. A taste tires where we thought 
eternity would not suffice; days cloud- 
less of care oppress us with their blue. 
All enjoyment perpetuated is lost; the 
matchless point of view grows weari- 
some. Man obtains but never attains; 
happiness itself fails to make him hap- 
py. When we receive all that we 
asked, we wonder we could have asked 
so little. The search of the heart is un- 
ending. 

Nothing is so good but that at times 
change is better. If perfection is per- 

[235] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

vasive we grow restless, if lasting we 
grow listless; from all sameness we 
turn dissatisfied away. Even long- 
sought peace drives us by its ennui 
back into the hateful strife again, and 
to a perpetuity of propriety even sor- 
did incident seems preferable. We can 
stand anything better than stagna- 
tion ; take from a man his bread of se- 
curity but leave him his tobacco of 
diversion. The day is insupportable 
without prospect of event; where rou- 
tine cuts off the possibility of ( some- 
thing happening,' life yawns. Futurity 
is a postman whom all eagerly expect, 
bring he good news or bad. Where no 
surprise is possible, there is no delight 
left: foresight and insight foreclose 
wonder. Any monotony tolls the bell of 
existence but variety rings its chimes ; not 
in the notes but in their due and varied 
sequence lies the melody's charm. 

[236] 



THE CHIMES OF EXISTENCE 

Without diversity there can be no 
keenness to perception nor edge to effi- 
ciency; and such is our cumulative 
craving for it that at last only sleep 
suffices. Because it kills suggestiveness, 
the unchanging checks progressiveness. 
All normal functions voice the same 
necessity of diversion: if the body tires 
from one position, how much more the 
mind. We stew in our own mood if the 
thought be not stirred; there is more 
music in life than the monotonous meas- 
ure of our heart. Expression must, like 
tea, be drawn off quickly, lest if it stand 
long on the leaves of thought, it extract 
the tannin of morbidness. Repetition 
outstays the welcome of the mind. To 
insist is to weaken our cause: dissent 
gathers, once the favourable impression 
wears off. Roughness only raises up 
new opposition to itself and fails of 
its purpose; but gentleness proselytes. 

[237] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

More often do we adopt the ways of 
those whom we overcome than of 
those who overcome us: Rome be- 
came hellenized, not Greece romanized. 
All emphasis of the obvious is offen- 
sive. Though the blatant get the clap- 
ping of hands, the contempt of the heart 
is only concealed. We are blind to the 
garish, but the subtle captivates at once : 
we cannot keep our eyes off the dim, 
hazy peaks. 

Thank God for the series of sleep 
that sharpens wit yet dulls memory, 
and thus keeps self endurable. As one 
summer obliterates its predecessor, so 
each day blots out the preceding; be- 
yond yesterday the past with few ex- 
ceptions is all of a piece. Not long is 
it before retrospect becomes so op- 
pressive that we live wholly in the 
present. Some one untouchable spot 
may cripple whole epochs of remem- 

[238] 



THE CHIMES OF EXISTENCE 

brance; we inhabit only the pleasant 
chambers of the heart and close all 
others. So complete is the insulation 
of forgetfulness that we are able to 
move newly-minded amid the memory- 
haunted scenes. 

The more versatile we are, the more 
variable, and therefore the more in 
need of variety; sensitiveness changes 
its dress frequently. Equally neces- 
sary to satisfaction are ease and hard- 
ship, safety and hazard, labour and 
leisure; there can be no holidays un- 
less there are few. Though the fixity 
of locality seems hopeless, the itinerancy 
of travel seems useless; the fascinating 
map proves in the following of it but a 
tiresome schedule. From the hearth 
how fair looks the world; yet out in its 
turmoil we find nothing better than to 
get back again. Where activity seethes, 
thought quiets down. With even great- 

[239] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

er expectancy than we sought the ex- 
changes of animation and barter, do 
we disperse again to the separateness 
of our contemplation. From all sides 
the human tide strains centrally to the 
great city, there only to turn and dis- 
gorge itself out again to the satellite 
suburbs. One looks for the white heat 
of life on its crowded corners and at its 
congested centre, but finds instead fran- 
tic figures and drawn faces rushing 
distractedly elsewhither. 

Persons that are always the same are 
not so much inwardly consistent as out- 
wardly indifferent. It is only land- 
locked souls that keep a constant level : 
oceanic expanses of spirit are always 
subject to great mood tides. Life must 
be translated into many media of ex- 
pression before it can be understood, 
and unless we vary with its changes we 
are unresponsive to its influence. Day 

[240] 



THE CHIMES OF EXISTENCE 

itself is the revolving flash from eterni- 
ty's headland. Surrounded by such 
massive variations as those of earth, 
air and sky, shall man remain stolid ? 
Climate sets the very clef of mood, so 
that in the mind there must be more 
than one time or season. And if the 
body vibrate from buoyant to burden- 
some, how should its spiritual tenant 
be stationary? Soul is a water that 
owes its colour not chiefly to itself but 
to the ampler skies of influence. Every 
blue Mediterranean is the liquefied 
heaven of its south. 

Fluctuation is all-prevalent. Inhere 
is no experience that does not soon 
evince its inclement days. Were it not 
for our variance we could not demarcate 
the unillumined coasts of existence; it 
is through our intermittence that we are 
distinctive. What clear sky of idealism 
but is at times overcast and rain-be- 

[241] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

teared; the most beautiful effect in the 
human landscape is the shadow of 
trouble upon the spiritual heights. 



[242] 



THE OPEN GATES OF JANUS 

CIVILIZATION is a mere modus 
vivendi, and the existent econom- 
ic order a provisional arrange- 
ment which is always ceaselessly, at 
times suddenly, being superseded. 
Live and let live is not yet widely 
applicable. Against the brute forces 
of existence security continues to post 
pickets of fear and precaution : against 
the untamed powers of nature and the 
unbroken instincts of our brother-man, 
society still needs protection. The 
gates of Janus are never closed. 

It is but an armed truce that the law 
affords between good and evil, between 
the classes and the masses. At every 
turn the opposing forces confront each 

[243] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

other — at the polls, on the platform, in 
the courts ; where men are gathered in 
crowds or when they pass each other 
singly on the sidewalk; in outbursts 
of mob violence or in covert attack and 
robbery ; in the master-and-servant rela- 
tionship of our own household. Even 
from the fireside hostility is never far. 

The wide world goes its separate way, 
and joint action is confined to areas of 
mere necessity or selfish advantage; 
society like water though a solid body if 
opposed, is yet unsustaining if relied 
upon. Co-operation is little more than 
nominal; spheres of helpfulness are 
mere oases in a desert of individualism. 
Not even centuries of organized life 
have sufficed to create such a modicum 
of concerted action as would ensure to 
every one the essentials of living. Man 
is a tribe of peaceably disposed animals ; 
but beyond the surface adjustments in- 

[244] 



THE OPEN GATES OF JANUS 

cident to external order, existence is still 
largely on a war-footing. 

The mortalities around us are silent; 
youth and strength go undisturbed 
along their way of health. Not sensi- 
tive is the ear of civilization to its 
casualties : from slaughtered beast, from 
slain humanity, comes no far-heard cry. 
The injured, the unfortunate, the err- 
ing slink out of sight; and because in- 
frequently confronted with their impor- 
tunacy, the hale and whole are seldom 
sensible of either their appeal or their 
plight. It is our substituted association 
with the living that keeps death from 
being more vividly brought home to us. 

Evolution goes on working out its 
formative designs by means of the hard- 
ships and trials of experience: the ex- 
tinction of the ill-adapted proceeds 
apace. Under existing social conditions 
it is as necessary to the survival of the 

[245] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

one type of man upon which civiliza- 
tion places its emphasis that all others 
should be crowded out, as it is in the 
animal world that one species should in 
self-preservation exterminate its rival 
species. The only escape from socio- 
logical manslaughter lies in so changing 
conditions that they shall themselves 
develop all men into the desired type. 
Until human laws are wholly amelio- 
rative, they must like natural laws con- 
tinue to be partially destructive. 

Only by exclusions can the status 
quo be maintained. In origin most 
privilege is self-preservation, and gen- 
erally serves still as a protective meas- 
ure. Priorities of power, possession, 
birthright and the like had their in- 
ception in and owe their retention to 
the interests of order. There is no 
important relationship or activity that 
to its due conduct or enjoyment does 

[246] 



THE OPEN GATES OF JANUS 

not find imperative the practice of 
some form of exclusiveness — be it of 
persons or of circumstances. It is fre- 
quently observed among representa- 
tives of the radical classes that, if ele- 
vated to official position, they are forced 
to hedge themselves about with the very 
formalities and to avail themselves of 
the very privileges which they had there- 
tofore denounced as snobbery. 

Society resembles nature in being 
genial only when conformed to ; toward 
the misunderstood, the suspected, the 
condemned, how little we realize the 
cruelty of its countenance. By the ill 
treatment or rough replies occasionally 
received from those that misplace us, 
are our eyes opened to the general at- 
titude most men encounter — and many 
merit. The captive looks out upon a 
world from which mere exclusion alters 
the entire aspect. 

[247] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

Participation in that perversion of 
social life miscalled * society,' when not 
due to some defect of temperament, is 
usually motived by selfish ends. Friend 
cultivates friend for profit, and self- 
seeking exploits the forms of hospital- 
ity. All well-poised persons soon fall 
away from such shams — the unam- 
bitious and noble scorn them ab initio. 
Great purpose is seldom seen abroad. 
We become scarce as we find ourselves, 
and practise both a natural and inevi- 
table exclusiveness. In every personal 
environment there will be found some 
lack of appreciation, upon which, 
whether antagonistic or merely derisory, 
sensitiveness is forced to turn its back. 

To others we are always a matter of 
far less observation than we think, and 
of even less concern. Men are sepa- 
rated from us by whatever separates us 
from them: the bridge is down both 

[248] 



THE OPEN GATES OF JANUS 

ways. We have the measure of the 
world's indifference toward us in our 
indifference toward it. The ordinary 
contacts of mankind afford little op- 
portunity for mutual understanding; 
so few are the occasions of even ex- 
ternal community that we are reduced 
to meeting at meals. Most lives touch 
like shipboard acquaintances only at 
their node of transit and share little of 
their enlargements beyond. 

Liberty of thought scatters the flock. 
Unanimity exists only in the class-room ; 
outside, every practical question is a 
matter of uncertainty calling for private 
judgment, and is settled by every one 
differently. Graduation not only con- 
fers the privilege of divergence but 
thereunto imposes the duty. After the 
initial gregariousness, companionship is 
no longer to be looked for; at best we 
may expect an occasional flash of ap- 

[249] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

preciation or a tacit general sympathy. 
Though we traverse the same ocean, 
our keels never furrow the same salt. 
As the rough inexorableness of nature 
appears in unexpected places through 
the smooth surface of our serenity, so 
crude fact everywhere crops through 
the ideal. The margins of moral- 
ity like those of safety are narrow: 
society like all terrestrial existence is 
never far distant from catastrophe. 
Mankind has not yet emerged from the 
woods of savagery as far as the flower 
of its cultivation would lead to infer. 
Upon the clearings of character and 
civilization the forest of primitive in- 
stinct presses hard, and only by per- 
petual weeding can we keep back the 
bracken and bush and sapling whose 
insidious inroads always presage a rec- 
lamation of the soil by the wilderness. 

[250] 



SUPREME PURPOSES 

PRECISION restricts growth; phi- 
losophy cannot long remain true 
unless it keeps open house to facts 
and is cordial to all comers. Too in- 
sistent an orderliness conflicts with 
the wider arrangements of existence: 
though system helps, an exact adher- 
ence to it confines and crushes. Any 
excess of carefulness in one direction is 
bound to mean carelessness in another. 
As memory is the strong point of little 
minds, so is it the weak point of great 
minds. Mere sentimentality bars prog- 
ress; better to be without feeling where 
feeling is without avail. In every 
occupation the hyper-sensitive are han- 
dicapped: circumspection blocks ac- 

• [ 251 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

complishment, criticism clogs creative- 
ness. A peace-at-any-price policy in- 
evitably brings stagnation and invites 
eventual disaster. Only robust senti- 
ment and blunt words meet the require- 
ments of raw reality. It is impossible 
to preserve an even surface of propriety : 
things happen as they must, and ap- 
pearances have to take care of them- 
selves as best they may. The large in- 
choate self is the chaotic but creative 
America of the soul. The days when 
cares less confined us and when en- 
thusiasms had free hand were days 
when great ideals most actuated our 
lives: our heroic age was our epic age. 
All inward liberty subordinates the 
appearance of the whole to the welfare 
of the parts ; a complete product is not 
obtained save by the full scope of its 
factors. Unless it expresses an inform- 
ing health, the profile of society, like 

[252] 



SUPREME PURPOSES 

facial expression and bodily figure, fails 
of beauty. There is more hope in the 
anarchy and bewilderment of individu- 
alism than in any communal uniformity 
that checks personal development. Pub- 
lic order cannot be judged by its preva- 
lence but only by the extent to which 
this exists without enforcement. It is 
merely in formulation that laws are 
legislative — both in origin and in sanc- 
tion they are social. An irregularity 
indicative of freedom is more pro- 
foundly beautiful than any symmetry 
produced by constraint. Just as men 
prove individually more interesting than 
collectively they would appear to be, 
so in contradiction to the outward 
confusion and ugliness of the commu- 
nity is the culture of character and 
home. How scarred by its garden 
walls seems the wooded hill-side, how 
broken its even green by the dwellings 

[253] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

that dot it; yet are these incident 
to local embellishment, implying land- 
scape-gardening and interior decora- 
tion. 

Progress leaves a ragged wake of 
ruin, and must depend upon some red 
cross of samaritanism to bring up the 
rear. Philanthropies, ethics, aesthetics 
are mere camp-followers of mankind's 
advance and are impotent to restrain 
the race from the rough route of its 
forward movement. The larger order 
is not nice. Though refinement ex- 
ceeds expectation, brutality also as- 
tounds by its extent. Mere brawn and 
muscle are everywhere the bases of ex- 
istence, and every new field of enter- 
prise increases the demand for them. 
Upon the inventories of materialism 
the priceless items are stated as of no 
value. We must sell our hay unless we 
can finance the finer crops ourselves. 

[254] 



SUPREME PURPOSES 

Not yet is the day when the red war of 
outward expansion may give place to 
the white peace of inward develop- 
ment. The world's work is still con- 
ducted under the lash : contract entered 
into under the duress of industrialism 
is but a veneer for servitude. From 
* might makes right' to 'majority 
makes right' is not necessarily a great 
step forward; truth still dwells with 
the minority however much political 
optimists may blink the fact, and de- 
mocracy can never justify itself until it 
has given effect to its fundamental as- 
sumption of equal education, cultiva- 
tion and opportunity for all. 

Most evils go to a tragic extreme be- 
fore culmination; an incredible climax 
is reached. The pendulum of error 
attains the point of terror, the bad 
wreaks its worst upon the best. Heroic 
truth has ever gone a via crucis; trag- 

[255] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

edy is epitomized in that surcharged 
trinity of words: They crucified Him. 
Nothing short of catastrophe to the per- 
fect suffices to rend the veil of the ex- 
istent and rouse lethargy from its sleep ; 
except through death life cannot prove 
itself completely. Nature resents every 
denial and inevitably rises to reaffirma- 
tion: resurrection is but the natural 
rebound of life. Only into the night 
of negation rises the soul's unquench- 
able star. 

Supreme purposes always exact an 
unreservedness of devotion that de- 
stroys their instrumentalities : not often 
does fate permit to the illustrious an 
anti-climax. Fame is an ivy of the ruins. 
Great deeds spend the doer — we pluck 
life only out of the jaws of death. 
There is no undertaking but risks 
offence, failure, disaster: with every 
venture we put our very lives in jeop- 

[256] 



SUPREME PURPOSES 

ardy, for all spiritual wounds are 
physically mortal. A gradual sacrifice 
of health, patience under declining 
strength — herein is heroism no less 
than in facing any sudden fate. In 
fact it is life itself that kills; death is 
the consummation of forces continu- 
ously in operation since birth, and like 
every due demolition is implicated in 
construction. Not even from the most 
sheltered lot or cautiously led existence 
can the destructive agencies encom- 
passing it be excluded. To all organ- 
isms the end comes normally, not as a 
misadventure, but as the full bloom and 
ripened result of instinct and natural 
activities. Recipes for longevity do not 
lengthen, but only protract: attempts 
to guard and so preserve life defeat their 
end, effecting pro tanto its immediate 
loss. Save by fatal acts we cannot 
educe the full self; it is when desperate 

[257] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

that we display our parts and sound 
the tone of our whole sonorousness. 
We both die by living and live by 
dying — through its forfeiture life be- 
comes eternal. At the cost of bodily 
beauty we win our laurels, at the 
expense of youth achieve our fame. 
Green to be sure is the olive of victory, 
yet withered the hand outstretched to 
take it. 

Death is the final renunciation that 
all men are called upon to make in the 
cause of progress; yet by old age this 
is rendered not only unregretful but 
grateful. More than so far is it per- 
mitted no man to follow the advance; 
upon some Joshua of a fresher genera- 
tion does it always devolve to go forward 
with the standards of achievement and 
enter the promised land of fulfilment. 
As fleshly decline buys spiritual ad- 
vancement, so by virtue of our indi- 

[258] 



SUPREME PURPOSES 

vidual abdication the race reigns. The 
demise of the body is, like fragrance, 
the generosity of substance and the 
very swan-song of fruition. 



[259] 



THE MASK OF CIRCUMSTANCE 

HEROISM is a ship that looks so 
romantic at sea, so dingy at the 
dock. There is no delight or 
disaster that does not soon drop into 
the jog-trot of days: our precious ex- 
periences that once meant so much 
to us, merge finally in mere general 
credits on account. The startling finds 
no niche in the quiet hall of fame, and 
discoveries that at first astounded the 
world are simply filed away in the or- 
derly desk of truth. Squalid common- 
place squats even upon Mediterranean 
shores and amid Arcadian scenes : from 
the universal vulgarity of the mid-day 
dinner there is no escape. The im- 
portunacy of circumstance is all-preva- 

[260] 



THE MASK OF CIRCUMSTANCE 

lent; storm or shine the incessant craft 
of daily duty put to sea. 

It is the blindness of experience that 
makes it so hard to bear; yet this is 
the very essence of its discipline. The 
moment could not be heroic if it were 
consciously so. Life is a purse that re- 
quires us, in getting at any one com- 
partment, to close all others : to see the 
larger significance of anything that oc- 
cupies us is difficult. Rarely does the 
modern voyage of existence afford an 
uninterrupted sight of the sea, or even 
of the decks: it is only in young com- 
munities that the total view yet survives 
to the individual. The tendency of 
labour is to withdraw us from the open 
air of events and to impose restraint 
and coercion. Destiny prepares itself 
in the pale secrecy of earth and brain. 

All things, when action approaches, 
seem to diminish in importance and in- 

[261] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

crease in difficulty. Incidents that in 
fact give life a new start, appear at the 
time only to retard it; those that in 
fact give it a newer and firmer founda- 
tion, only to subvert it. Few are the 
peaks in life that catch the sun of dis- 
tinction. Even epoch-making events 
are wont to wear the momentary guise 
of diversions from the main issue. Un- 
profitableness is never so self-apparent 
as when it begins to turn itself to profit, 
nor laziness so glaring as when it first 
throws off its lethargy. Unless there is 
progress, the delay is not galling: to 
the callous the world wags along very 
well. So exalted must be our standards 
in order to accomplish anything pre- 
eminent that perseverance can scarcely 
cope with discouragement. The mod- 
esty of most creative workers is due to 
their contact with the immensity still 
remaining undone. Every large soul 

[262] 



THE MASK OF CIRCUMSTANCE 

brings its littleness to the bar of its 
breadth — and lives humbly. 

Our proven powers are a gross un- 
derestimate of our possibilities; only 
by believing ourselves to be what we 
are not, can we ever become what we 
are. To be matter-of-fact as to our 
capacity is death. It takes art to tell 
us our extent: music surprises us at 
our infinity. Careers are limited only 
as they accept bounds. One cannot 
feel magnified by any reputation if it 
is deserved, for he is more than any 
mere evidence of himself; pride is by 
its very nature a sign of over-valuation. 
Only men without courage parade it: 
braggarts think themselves valiant even 
when their opponent yields. A noble 
discontent registers the struggling soul 
and even impatience shows us to be 
far-bound. Life is expectant tasting. 
We rate self by what we exact of it: 

[263] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

genius divides with no lesser claim. 
The heart's divinity always suffers 
spiritual homesickness. 

All meanings grow abashed and self- 
effacing in our presence. The living 
moment has no colour of its own, but, 
chameleon-like, takes that of some fut- 
ure to which it looks forward or of 
some past to which it looks back. 
There seems offered us only the unrest 
of transition to a better that is not yet 
or the peacefulness of a good that is 
no more — anticipatory youth or remi- 
niscent age, constructive Americas or 
finished Europes. 

How prone is discouragement to for- 
get that all former achievement was 
equally beset with difficulty and doubt : 
the path of glory is ever a miry road 
to him that travels it. Golgothas of 
triumph become sanctified by venera- 
tion and their grim lesson is lost; the 

[264] 



THE MASK OF CIRCUMSTANCE 

sacredness of the cross has supplanted 
its profanation. What to the comba- 
tants was the field of victory but a 
dark, slippery place of struggle ? There 
is but one battle-ground — the here and 
the now. 

Unlike the optical, spiritual perspec- 
tive enlarges: the past is a dais. Im- 
agination mounts the great figures of 
history on horseback and invests them 
with deification: we are all Aztecs, to 
whom the cavalry of events seems like 
a gallop of the gods. Beneath every 
halo, however, or grand pose or golden 
sky lived in truth a simple humanity, 
concerned chiefly with every-day inter- 
ests: the ruins we sentimentalize were 
often the seat of flagrant living. From 
no romantic age, place or occasion was 
the wet-blanket of reality absent. The 
day always thinks itself degenerate — 
no longer do the ancient towers of 

[968] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

time vibrate to thrilling hours but to a 
mere monotony of existence. Yet the 
unnoted victories of civilization are be- 
ing won the while. Deaf must be the 
ear that cannot through the clatter of 
circumstance hear the steady onmarch 
of humanity, shaking the very earth. 

Unless we live with insight, we shall 
not look back without regret. Men 
hasten through the days in search of 
what the days themselves contain : they 
press on to the destination only to find 
on reaching it that what they came for 
was passed on the way. The ends of 
life are not at the end. The safe moor- 
ing from which we confidently cast off 
— how eagerly we strive to regain it; to 
the dear harbour from which we impa- 
tiently put forth, how keen though vain 
our wish to return ! All day long we pur- 
sue our toil neglectful of the sun, yet 
once set, every eye turns with regretful 

[266] 



THE MASK OF CIRCUMSTANCE 

gaze toward the untenanted west : youth 
is so fair — only afterward. 

It behooves us to step softly and 
tread gently, for who knows upon what 
memory we may not even now be set- 
ting foot ? Our o'ershadowing pres- 
ence beclouds our path. To itself con- 
sciousness seems merely to be taking 
notes for further elaboration ; life moves 
under a constant illusion of later re- 
vision and review. Everywhere one 
observes preparations for a holiday 
that is never held. Men look forward 
to some great day of fulfilment, and 
only little by little does it dawn upon 
them that the day is already at hand. 
The fleeting proves to be the perma- 
nent. 



[267] 



BABEL 

THE congestion of life loads atten- 
tion with more experiences than 
it can liquidate into joy: happi- 
ness is forced into bankruptcy by a 
run on its perfectly solvent capacity. 
The expansion of our soul and the safe 
credit of our fancy collapse under the 
importunate demands of phenomena. 
Let us conduct no larger a business 
with existence than the capital of en- 
joyment warrants, opening our doors 
to no more than we can accommodate. 
When apperceptions exceed suscepti- 
bility, they impose impossibilities upon 
it: what we have no room for we can- 
not take in. The dishes are removed 
while we are still eating and ever fresh 

[268] 



BABEL 

ones placed before us. In the midst 
of our superabundant blessings we 
taste none of them. 

Modern existence is a very car-win- 
dow of impression and fatigue. The 
soul is crazed by the assaults of the 
city : attention lives on the rack. Mul- 
tiplication of potentialities has so mul- 
tiplied dangers that life is largely en- 
grossed in safely crossing its tracks. 
The very demands that raise the phys- 
ical requirements of the race reduce 
its physique: only the huge business 
of the day can stagger under its cost. 
There is no way for civilization to es- 
cape from the burden of its budget 
save by a general disarmament of its 
material requirements : did we care only 
for the important, the greater part of 
the world's work would be unneces- 
sary. Most lives are mortgaged to 
mere existence, leaving but a small 

[269] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

equity of enjoyment. The juggernaut 
of commercialism crushes men by way 
of broadening them, and irons them 
flat by way of smoothing the path of 
mankind. 

Superfluity fills the world ; experience 
is chock-a-block and asks only for re- 
lief. The soul is buried beneath the 
drift of circumstance and struggles 
like an entombed miner for extrication. 
We long since gathered more data 
than we can ever avail ourselves of. 
The new is unnecessary: everything 
resembles what we know already and 
leads to no further conclusion. Num- 
ber does not change the issue raised by 
instance, but simply confuses its state- 
ment: the salient fact is smothered in 
its incidentals. Upon us seeking the 
all-round view, men impose their angle 
of partial vision — to our general remark 
they answer specifically. So enveloped 

[270] 



BABEL 

in the flummeries of worldly honour are 
ability and character that it is difficult 
any longer to detect the real thing for 
which they stand. All that is not con- 
ducive is seductive: the danger of ac- 
cessories is that they generally distract 
and often desecrate. More than enough 
for the purpose is too much for it: pos- 
session beyond need is a burden. 

Upon experience enjoyment imposes 
a natural limit: why gain the whole 
world and lose our capacity to appre- 
ciate it ? It is still necessary to ' count 
our mercies' would we perceive them; 
let us constantly be telling the beads 
of our pleasure. Just as one enjoys 
nothing when seeing everything, so 
when seeing nothing he enjoys every- 
thing; in default of other interest even 
the monotonous wall-paper of existence 
interests us. Things do not lose their 
force or effect from their prevalence but 

[271] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

from our insensibility. Over-experience 
affords no experience whatsoever, for 
values vanish; only under restriction 
can anything register its importance. 
How often where we had awaited from 
friends eager expectancy, have we not 
found our advent to be only an added 
complication in their already over- 
crowded lives. The soul is stricken 
with reception beyond perception. We 
are wholly unable to live up to the ac- 
cumulations of experience already ours, 
yet keep constantly amassing a larger 
fortune of them: a glutted attention 
is testified to on all sides by worry, 
sleeplessness and every other form of 
mental break-down. The survivors 
of our fathers' quieter age show minds 
less wracked, hearts less wrung; life 
to-day like its locomotion is so rapid 
that every stop is sudden and jarring. 
It is permissible that energy should be 

[272] 



BABEL 

a matter of more or less, but never of 
some or none. When the day's work 
brings, instead of mere fatigue, pros- 
tration, it exceeds the day's strength 
and docks the future. Labour and re- 
cess, morning and evening, ought not 
to vary except in relative degrees of 
freshness. To overlive is but an in- 
sidious overfeeding: it is as incumbent 
upon us to impose abstemiousness upon 
the mind as upon the body, and to 
guard it against excess. A bare suffi- 
ciency is the largest capaciousness; 
what does not nourish is actually in- 
jurious. The intestinal mind feeds well 
but the glutton senses starve. Let us 
take the timely warning of laziness, 
uttering as it does satiety's protest 
against surfeit and proclaiming that 
we would be left alone : heard is it not 
by the empty-minded but by the full — 
heeded is it not by the idle but by the 

[278] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

wise. Well-watered subsoils need little 
surface irrigation of novelty. 

We lose our way amid the city-streets 
of mere happenings. The stream of 
the mind flows through the sands of 
multiplicity and has difficulty in keep- 
ing continuity. Only strength can 
grasp totals; feebleness gets absorbed 
in the items. We relish the complex 
when we are keen enough to rid it of 
its complexity; but fatigue because it 
is weary, dullness because it is blunt* 
craves the obvious. In the maze of 
reduplication, perception is perplexed; 
without the aid of abstract concepts 
we should be unable to arrive at any 
singleness of idea. Open eyes are 
empty; surface-finds usually prove 
valueless. The buzzing fly of phe- 
nomena diverts the attention of most 
men; but in the capacity to bring 
the scattered parts of experience to- 

[274] 



BABEL 

gether and weld them into unity, lie 
both genius and character. Propor- 
tion is the very structure of perfection, 
and a sense of it can alone make a com- 
prehensive mind. The power to sum- 
marize is the power to make ours: we 
must keep everything down to its per- 
tinence. Though attention is exposed 
to every barbarian trifle, there needs 
but a small guard of concentration to 
hold its citadel. The trained eye takes 
in at a glance: omission proves the ex- 
pert, and brevity, wisdom. To come 
at the truth, facts must be abandoned; 
we cannot stick to the letter of expe- 
rience. Whitman was no more an ar- 
tist than an inventory is literature. 
Behind the minutiae of manifestation 
lies the meaning: idealism excepts to 
realism and appeals to reality. 

The sea of event fumes at its edge, 
however still its expanse may lie. 

[275] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

Pomp and parade attend petty func- 
tions more often than notable transac- 
tions. Though the world is imposing in 
circumstance it is usually trivial in aim : 
its great outward occasions are but 
trifling occurrences. The elaboration 
and detail of even commonplace ideas 
make them so superficially dazzling 
as to hide their miserable shallowness. 
Life suffers from over-activity rather 
than from inertia; there is a greater 
disposition to do the wrong thing than 
to do nothing. Restiveness is a steed 
that starts before thought is fairly in 
the saddle; the energetic prefer a cer- 
tainty though false to the uncertainty 
of truth. We usually impute to men 
better motives for their acts than for 
their inaction; the reverse, however, 
would more often conform to fact. It 
is a fortunate provision of nature that 
visits excess with weariness and damp- 

[276] 



BABEL 

ens incompetency with indolence, there- 
by rendering them harmless. The do- 
ings of the day are for the most part 
the mere workings of the yeast; and 
their record is of no importance except 
as testifying to the ferment. Generally 
speaking, bodily activity is in inverse 
ratio to mental : the little-minded must 
always be about something, but the 
large outlook is still. Only leisure is 
formative; the flood-gates of thought 
do not open till quiet comes. Those 
moments that suddenly crystallize into 
clearness overtake none but the quies- 
cent. 

Let us cease to be busy that we may 
at last get to work. The activities that 
are filled with the exhilaration of ac- 
complishment do not often accomplish 
much: the unrest of most lives is but 
the pendulum-swing of one or another 
excess of motion. Work is seldom 

[277] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

according to its seeming; and labour is 
its least laborious form. To be hu- 
man is the busiest of all occupations. 
The average man regards definite trans- 
actions dealing with the material means 
of subsistence as a far more serious af- 
fair than undefined employment hav- 
ing to do with the processes and beau- 
ties of life itself (the very dogs are sus- 
picious of a loiterer) ; yet how much 
more transcending in consequence, more 
strenuous in accomplishment is the lat- 
ter. Even when we merely look on and 
contemplate, we fulfil a necessary func- 
tion and one that is in many cases more 
important than participation itself. To 
dream is to keep the sweetest tryst and 
to be faithful to a foreordained rendez- 
vous; it puts the motion of privilege 
and comes at once to the real business 
of life. External variety, such as change 
of scene, excitement and the like, are 

[278] 



BABEL 

often injurious because enabling one 
without ennui to remain spiritually the 
same ; whereas circumstantial sameness 
forces one in very self-refreshment to 
change within. It will always be found 
that travellers do not enlarge inwardly 
as much as the sedentary expand by 
study. 

Reality overpowers the imagination 
with particulars and stifles it with local 
colour ; the picture is obliterated by the 
crowd of impressions. From a first 
glance we get but a general idea, and 
at the second, notice mere details ; only 
then is it that we observe the parts as 
a whole, as well as the whole in its 
parts. The day fills itself with its in- 
evitable inflow, and vision is quickly 
submerged; all life looks jaded upon 
its thronged thoroughfare. From the 
melee of circumstance creative genius 
has ever had to go forth: contempla- 

[279] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

tion is a cat that roams when all the 
senses are asleep. As the food that 
strengthens also dulls, so is it difficult 
to obtain the material for art without at 
the same time forfeiting the conditions 
of its artistic treatment. Yet conversely 
the very occasions that thus preclude 
expression also prompt it ; inspiration is 
not as infrequent as the opportunity to 
take advantage of it. By fleeing prosaic 
circumstances we are likely to forego 
poetic suggestion. Time always seems 
to be either too full or too empty for ut- 
terance. Silence has but the negative 
virtue of exclusion, and mere isolation 
is self-filled; as the city can only inti- 
mate, so the country can only elaborate. 
The one point of vantage is where quiet 
comes closest to the thick of life. The 
world does not pass us in review unless 
we pass it in review ; creative seclusion 
is but a step removed from the street. 

[280] 



BABEL 

Only in the metropolitan proportions 
of life are the petty and the personal 
suppressed : it is by keeping time empty 
but interest rilled, by having the world 
accessible to us but ourselves not to it, 
that we obtain the true mixture of liv- 
ing. The drama of event is best seen 
from the background, for the audience 
itself is part of the spectacle. To know 
rather than to be known is happiness — 
albeit men ever seek to be known 
rather than knowing. Let us rejoice at 
the customary retirement of our lot, 
seeing that all commanding locations 
are exposed to the winds. 

Life is complication, art simplifi- 
cation. Except we disentangle exist- 
ence we cannot see its drift or restore 
its gusto. Only analysis discovers 
what is amiss: totality can never 
telL In the potpourri of experience 
the individual flavour of its ingre- 

[281] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

dients is lost: taste is blinded by a 
blend; by resolving into its parts, how- 
ever, we obtain an explanation. Sin- 
gleness is the bold pencil that with a 
mere stroke conveys its meaning; but 
complexity blurs the effect with intri- 
cate detail. What one misses in the 
bulk, he finds in the specimen, where 
it is easier to get at; the thought must 
indeed be small that cannot expand 
its notes. Not only are the lessons of 
experience as well learned from little 
things as from large, but better, be- 
cause they are more often repeated, 
and more impressively, because not 
derived from the exceptional. Unless 
we husk ideas of their surplusage, we 
cannot partake of them: hence the 
clarification incidental to dealing with 
matters at a distance, whereby separa- 
tion eliminates the environment that 
obscures. Whatever we make trans- 

[282] 



BABEL 

parent to truth is transfigured. Things 
in their purity are a pleasure — it is 
only the needless adjuncts that annoy. 
Whenever essentials act upon sensi- 
tiveness, the effect is beauty, the prod- 
uct poetry; sweeter is the silence of the 
mind's own musing than all the sym- 
phony of instrumentation. The ter- 
race of spirituality keeps the highway 
of offence out of sight: every real 
home is a refuge from the inessential. 
Dignity of character is like unto a 
darkened house whose cool and quiet 
seclusion comes of windows shuttered 
against the outside glare and noise. 

All self-limitation is selective; the 
body-guard of life is picked from the 
flower of its troops. When we take 
little luggage we have only what we 
want. The past packs its wisdom in 
proverbs — full-weighted, fit for travel. 
Abbreviation is expressive, and conden- 

[283] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

sation gains in weight: to cut thought 
is to get the sparkle of its diamond. 
How precious is time when short: days 
when numbered begin to be well spent. 
All summaries clarify — farewells review 
life and attempt reparation; danger 
raises the quality of conduct. 

Through the fine mesh of memory, 
experience is strained of its coarseness 
and so made easier of assimilation. 
From the past we learn the lessons of 
the present; the enjoyment of most 
incidents is in retrospect. The far-off 
fog is the sun-lit cloud: the dead 
belie their meanness. It is chiefly the 
nobleness of former times that sur- 
vives to shame these: history preserves 
its prowess as if for example. Among 
the remoter phases of existence where 
garish actuality cannot so easily dispel 
it, sentiment takes refuge — all old 
days are the good old days. Lost 

[284] 



BABEL 

causes are hot-beds of romance; the 
fate of the fallen prince has ever been 
espoused by the chivalric. In long 
stalactites of beauty time reflects its 
illumined shores. 

Incontrovertible testimony to our 
character is borne by the harvest of 
our retentiveness ; for its seed is atten- 
tion. How tell-tale are the topics we 
broach, the impressions we describe, 
the incidents we relate. Where recol- 
lection rings hollow, perception ran 
shallow. There is in the soul a re- 
moteness that is not distance, a gulf 
that no backward glance can bridge. 
All that sensibility let slip is retrospec- 
tively lost ; but all that it seized is an in- 
separable possession. With what treas- 
ures were not the galleries of the mind 
filled, had its acquisitions always been 
of the best. 

Memory is the one pressed flower 

[285] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

that never fades. The past is not only 
telescopically near, but microscopically 
enlarged; by middle age its accumu- 
lations encroach upon any fresh ac- 
cretion of experience. On the surface 
of the mind's mirror, the moment is a 
mere mist; one would get little nour- 
ishment from the event without the cud 
of recollection. We work up the can- 
vas of presence in the studio of absence. 
No packet of other days is opened but 
some still-living thought falls out. With 
what vivid recall speak the jottings of 
our note-book — theirs is a conjury of 
revival little suspected by the random 
item: life leaps out to us once more 
from the captor page. In the amber of 
thought the fly of circumstance lies 
embalmed. Every reminder restores 
an extinct world; the geologic rock of 
recollection retains an ineffaceable rec- 
ord of the past. We cannot take out 

[286] 



BABEL 

a pin without unpinning all attendant 
circumstances: every extant structure 
contains in its corner-stone the con- 
temporaneousness of its foundation. 
Even in abstract contemplation, bits of 
environment will be found embedded. 
There is no repetition but opens the 
sluices of time: the recurrent act or 
circumstance is a pedestal of enduring 
memory. To be associated with every- 
day details of existence is to be ensured 
against oblivion; hence the intimate 
character of love's gifts. 

Things appear ever less real the 
more we realize them: after our first 
acquaintance with it, the world never 
seems actual. Under a wider touch we 
grow less sensitive, and become apa- 
thetic toward an over-extended contact. 
Though expansion adds interests, it 
takes away interest in them. Likewise 
it is only first experiences that rack — all 

[287] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

repetitions are the later children of 
easier birth; beyond every pass of 
endeavour lies an effortless descent. 
Early conditions are the sole credible 
ones: all men are dazed by this thing 
that age does to them : we instinctively 
think of ourselves as more essentially 
what we were than what we are. The 
reminiscences that cleave time and lay 
bare the by-gone seem not only to re- 
vert but to reveal. Childhood's por- 
traits remain to us ever the truest. 
Those that knew us in infancy or 
obscurity never realize though they 
concede our fame; the former self is 
always stored up against its every 
later change. In memory most amend- 
ments are lost — the original motion re- 
mains; by a lapse of thought we often 
carry out a first intention, utterly for- 
getting some reconsideration and al- 
teration of it. Few are the impres- 

[288] 



BABEL 

sions of after years that accompany 
us far, whereas those of youth are 
ineradicable. 

Day by day the coasts of retrospect 
recede further, yet come but the more 
conspicuously into sight: experience 
piles ever layer upon layer, yet the 
earlier become only the more accessible. 
We are as dancers that through every 
change in the music hold to the same 
step, never ceasing to expect a recur- 
rence of the original rhythm. So con- 
tinuously potent are first influences 
that it is not hyperbole but simple fact 
that mothers control the destiny of 
mankind. Forces of which it is no 
longer conscious ceaselessly mould the 
soul. Character is a seaworthiness 
whose lines are laid down upon the 
ways of childhood. 



[289] 



FAR HORIZONS 

ONLY the unuttered thoughts 
retain their full expansiveness ; 
expression belittles. The best 
qualified are always the most chary 
of positive statement. Though words 
clothe, they also cloak; to make defi- 
nite both limits meaning and, by raising 
points of disputation, detracts from it. 
All literalism silences the overtones of 
the idea; our glimpses are more ex- 
tensive than our sight. Rarely do the 
accurate arrive at great truths. The 
minutiae of knowledge war against its 
width ; minds stuffed with facts are not 
nourished by them. 

Wonder is the language where words 
fail. Thought pierces but the surface 

[290] 



FAR HORIZONS 

strata of truth, and the plummet of phi- 
losophy goes little deeper. If we reached 
the ultimate reason we could not state 
it; the first cause is necessarily inex- 
pressible. Men can still be garrulous 
over piecemeal beauty — its effulgence, 
however, says the final word and leaves 
them speechless. Perfection rests its 
case. The doubtful is argumentative, 
but talk drops into silence when truth 
arrives. 

The mind feels richer if it does 
not compute its wealth: sensitiveness 
shrinks from exposure and deep senti- 
ment balks at any exhibition of itself. 
More impressive is a single large unit 
than any number of smaller units that 
equal it. The year is longer than its 
total of days. Contrary to expectation, 
sums stated in francs seem smaller 
than their equivalent in pounds. It is 
not the quick tick of the second hand 

[291] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

that makes us realize the flight of 
time, but rather the slow passage of 
the hours. 

Context limits : an isolated statement 
contains all it will hold, but a con- 
nected one expands only as far as its 
neighbours will let it. Into silence we 
may read anything we wish. Latent 
disapproval, because of its lack of speci- 
fication, is felt distributively ; protests 
are most effective when unspoken. 
Every definite occupation deprives us 
of the privilege of changing our funda- 
mental convictions. We can no longer 
run with the hare of individuality when 
we hunt with the hounds of convention. 
Even superficial indicia of social or pro- 
fessional position — such as attire, hous- 
ing, place of business, repute — tend to 
colour our conduct with their implied 
standards and to confine our thought 
within the limits they set. Likewise we 

[292] 



FAR HORIZONS 

become prisoners to our words when 
once we have committed our ideas to 
them, and no longer retain the creative 
power that can correct them ; the formu- 
lation of our mere tentativeness assumes 
an unintended finality. All media and 
forms of expression are hindrances, and 
we can only reduce their harmfulness 
by choosing the freest; the real tech- 
nique is not to be acquired by the tech- 
nical but only by such as are surcharged 
with the spirit that through it seeks 
outlet. 

All flux of form stimulates the imag- 
ination because, like chaos, full of in- 
finite possibility. There are no sails 
upon the sea equal to the clouds, no 
stream as beautiful as that of flowing 
time. Only when the eye is vague does 
the retina of the mind picture sharp; 
we intensify impressions by closing the 
eyes. Yearning proves deficient in 

[293] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

specification and receives its solace 
from other sources than it had expect- 
ed: the perfection which youth hoped 
to find, converts itself into an ideal to 
be dreamed of, a heaven to be looked 
forward to. The transcription of any 
one scene or experience can never be a 
legitimate field for art, whose concep- 
tions are necessarily composite, sup- 
plying the deficiency of each life by 
rounding out living. Each one's idea 
of heaven is the supplement of his 
unrealized earth. 

Whatever baffles, incites us: we de- 
mand entrance wherever we are de- 
barred. Credulity is the sole remain- 
ing sea of mystery. The curtained 
contains the impossible, and secrecy 
confirms any theory that will account 
for it. Heights covered by clouds are 
surely snow-capped ; just over the edge 
of every hope lies Elysia. We were as 

[294] 



FAR HORIZONS 

credulous as the ancients under their 
provocation ; sensationalism is the 
modern form of superstition. In the 
absence of certitude the fury of the 
unbridled imagination breaks forth : yet 
a drop of cooling deflniteness allays the 
fever at once. How quickly the actual 
facts of the matter restore life to the 
norm. 

Interest in the day lasts only until its 
possibilities fade — its freshness passes 
only with ours: now screams the noon 
and puts the morn to flight. Unless 
our words suggest the unsaid, they say 
nothing: things that thrill can only be 
implied. The hearer adds the idea 
that terrifies or delights; his the world 
of meaning he attributes to the word 
that awakened it. Woman does not 
share the dream, nor man the ideal, 
of which each is to the other the em- 
bodiment; the peculiar graciousness 

[295] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

ascribed to the beloved is the chrism 
of the lover. Romance is its own en- 
vironment. All hills and horizons are 
haunted, and every bay is the refuge of 
buccaneers. 

We do not realize how much of the 
world is self-made, nor, until we sub- 
side, perceive the oft-times tawdriness 
of the tinsel that dazzled us. One has 
but to hush his music and extinguish 
his lights to reduce the brilliant scene 
to grayness. How serious turn the gay 
if they do but pause — just as one seems 
to escape from locality and obtain im- 
munity from the moment as long as he 
keeps going, yet to sink into their mire 
again the instant he stops; and as all 
men feel an emancipation in mere 
speed. The bare walls of existence are 
scarcely recognizable if our bric-a-brac 
and miscellany of ornamentation are 
removed; what were the landscape 

[296] 



FAR HORIZONS 

of life without our spiritual atmos- 
phere ? The charm of the climate is 
imputed to the country; we cannot 
believe that the glow of early life was 
due solely to our dreams. Are these in- 
deed the romantic persons of our young 
enthusiasm, these that now go their 
prosaic way of maturity? Whither is 
the erewhile spring in our steps upon 
this same path ? Coldly the elder eyes 
behold the hotfoot of youth; our for- 
mer motives become incomprehensible. 
Quickly indeed would the world be 
dashed upon the rocks of unreality 
were its helm in the hand of youth- 
illusioned pilots. 

Opportunity sobers longing. Ob- 
jects while yet unseen seem nearer 
than when at last they come into sight. 
Let us not go too close for effect; all 
meetings dissipate some sentiment or 
destroy some ideal. On board the ship 

[297] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

her lines are not visible; patriotism 
flourishes best outside the capital. Life 
is a music heard most sweetly at a dis- 
tance, where it blends. On the return 
of long-absent friends it is often diffi- 
cult to identify one's idealizing remem- 
brance of them with the reality. Our 
conception of one another grows more 
distinctive in separation: correspond- 
ence proves to be the closer touch. The 
mind by an acquired momentum goes 
on with the persons from whom it 
parts; and we are accompanied on a 
journey not by those that travel with 
us, but by those that remain behind. 

Fear and hope discount every possi- 
bility : the anticipated has already hap- 
pened. To the lively fancy, experience 
is a continual relief or disappointment, 
for few pains or pleasures equal their 
foretaste. Nothing is so beautiful or 
so dreadful but it has been outpictured : 

[298] 



FAR HORIZONS 

the event is surprisingly neutral. By 
the time the imaginative get to the liv- 
ing of it, the gusto of life is gone. 
Dwelling on the deed palsies the doing 
of it: the preparations we make for a 
great occasion usually end in taking 
the wind out of action's sails and in 
leaving the hand lifeless. Imagination 
lives a continuous anti-climax. 

Dread pertains to the unknown. 
We shrink from the short, sharp mo- 
ment of pain because we do not know 
its limits; but fear subsides when we 
know the worst. In every anxiety we 
turn for reassurance to those that have 
gone before us. Ignorance and inex- 
perience have a hundred fears that 
wisdom is spared ; the aspen leaf of ap- 
prehension trembles in a breeze per- 
ceptible to itself alone. We are more 
startled at a false alarm than at a true, 
because if there is need for action, the 

[299] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

nerves feel no shock of reaction. It is 
chiefly threatened ills that make us 
miserable: what we have once incor- 
porated into our outlook is thereafter 
a matter of indifference. Nervous peo- 
ple make a practice of anticipating the 
worst, so that whatever happens they 
shall have outfelt it. The expected 
has no shock. 

The pleasures of the imagination are 
keenest, for, being free from the dis- 
turbance of contiguous circumstance, 
they enjoy a completeness that is miss- 
ing in those afforded by active life. 
The bare idea serves the experienced 
for reality: as we advance, we sing 
more within. Participation is neces- 
sarily flurried by performance, so that 
from any eventful experience the full 
realization of its meaning is absent. 
Of the impressions it sought how shorn 
is travel, because of its incidentals. 

[300] 



FAR HORIZONS 

No white light of fact is as beautiful 
as its refracted or reflected rays; there 
is a charm in the cultivated landscapes 
of imaginative creation that the primal 
scene lacks. Literature is a moonlight 
that casts a spell over life. 

Though man is immured in the four 
walls of his five senses, he roams the 
universe. Life everywhere presses be- 
yond environment: all idealism gazes 
out to sea. No game that gives more 
than fleeting glimpses of itself is worthy 
of the sportsman; the truth-seeker 
shoots on the wing. Ever a frontiers- 
man is faith, dwelling on the fringe 
of fact's settlements. Humanity scales 
the ringed horizon of its whereabouts 
and crowds into each fresh territory 
opened up. 

We are never really disillusioned, but 
disappointment only lodges its hopes 
elsewhere: idealization brooks no long 

[301] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

suspense. In default of perfection it 
puts up with approximations, and how- 
ever visible may be the clay feet it 
does not intermit its worship. The 
Germany of our student days, the 
America of our freedom, must still be 
somewhere in existence, though we are 
forced to posit them upon the stars. 
Unending is the search for El Dorado. 
The Oceanica of the beyond con- 
futes all sceptics: every spiritual navi- 
gator reports it — only stay-at-home ma- 
terialists are incredulous. Though its 
coast-lines remain uncharted, no lands 
are so well authenticated: man is in 
closer and more frequent commerce 
with the unrealized world than with 
the actual about him. Of what life 
does not the desire lie on the other side 
of some Jordan of separation ? Con- 
sciousness is in continuous migration 
elsewhither: to depict dreams is the 

[302] 



FAR HORIZONS 

province of art. Though each day is 
an expedition, yet there are ever unex- 
plored regions left. Only against a 
glorified horizon is existence sharply 
outlined. Earth remains stoically dull 
to the illumination of the west, but 
the far-seeing skies are fired. 



[80S] 



THE UNCIRCUMSTANCED 
SOUL 

THE mind, having its own environ- 
ment, pursues a different course 
from that of the body. It looks 
one way but sees another; it sits here 
but thinks there. The chair is a jour- 
ney. Others imagine us to be mentally 
occupied as circumstances or speech 
would indicate — yet so is it seldom. 
The immediate holds us but for a 
moment; our response reveals a cir- 
cuit of thought since the remark that 
evoked it. It may often be that those 
who do not know enough to come in 
out of the rain, know too much to do 

so. Firmly planted are the feet of him 

[304 ] 



THE UNCIRCUMSTANCED SOUL 

alone whose head is in the clouds. We 
must avert the gaze from what we 
would behold. The mind swerves off 
from anything it faces and must squint 
to see. Attention perceives when it 
turns its back: in memory is the scene, 
outside the concert-room the music. 
We walk the unconscious side of things 
and look across. 

Every absence from the desk solves 
its difficulties. It is between the closing 
and the opening of our office that most 
of our work is done: the saunter is 
swifter than the stride. By indirection 
the purpose accomplishes itself. With- 
out momentary pretence it is often 
impossible to give a permanently true 
impression. Comprehensiveness and 
therefore comprehension must always 
be at the cost of apparent coherence. So 
many are the ramifications of truth that 
the mind's uncurbed sequence of them 

[305] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

necessarily leads to a point where we 
forget what we were thinking or talking 
about. The straying of attention, the 
rambling of thought, the flight of im- 
agination — all these are a larger free- 
dom of the same sense of association 
and relevancy that under closer rein 
imposes concentration. 

Silence baffles, whereas any answer 
is a clew: what the word conceals, the 
tone tells. Others do not notice what 
we hide, but only our hiding it. There 
is no such effective subterfuge as open- 
ness: we suspect only what is done 
furtively. It is the overheard remark, 
the stricken-out word that piques at- 
tention: from what people let fall we 
piece out the disclosure. Sight's di- 
rectness meets obstacles that sound's 
deviation avoids; all hear the sunset- 
gun, few see the flag drop. 

Because implying general knowledge 
[306 ] 



THE UNCIRCUMSTANCED SOUL 

or acceptance, an incidental allusion 
is felt to concede more than any di- 
rect mention states. Where such trib- 
ute to Napoleon's greatness as the 
prestige accruing to Britain through 
his overthrow ? Criticism is always the 
shadow of praise — it is insignificance 
alone that escapes comment. The most 
galling of all offences is neglect; no 
studied exclusion cuts like the mere 
failure to include. Any positive an- 
tagonism arouses healthy scorn, but 
from negative indifference we get no 
reaction to dispel its chill. 

It is not conditions that count, but 
our own condition: all's well when we 
are. One constantly falls into the er- 
ror of attributing his inspired moment 
to the place, and thinks to repeat its 
occurrence by perpetuating its occa- 
sion. The transfiguration turns out 
to have been no event of environment, 

[307 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

however, but one of universal setting 
that needs not the vowing of any tem- 
ple of permanence to the spot. Every- 
where the spiritually fair days are in- 
frequent, and there will always be 
some inclemency to ruffle the smooth 
seeming of perfection. We shall 
discover no other continent of life 
except the better cultivation of this 
one, no new heaven until there is a 
new earth. The time spent in outward 
search were better spent in inward 
finding. 

Beneath the troubled surface of the 
objective world, the mind swims in 
the clear waters of truth. Surround- 
ings cease to concern as purpose be- 
comes serious. For their better enact- 
ment mental operations seek out spaces 
from which the world is excluded: 
counting-rooms, studios, offices furnish 
no incitement other than opportunity — 

[308] 



THE UNCIRCUMSTANCED SOUL 

like a deck swept for action, so grim is 
the desk of the great. The engrossed 
attention is as unconscious of time or 
whereabouts as is sleep ; where the soul 
is full, the universe is empty. Vital 
thought is unenvironed, illustrious deeds 
uncircumstanced : the drama of reality 
is acted without stage-setting. Care- 
less of occasion are the doughty, and 
awaiting no mediacy : life at high pitch 
rests lightly on earth. As oft as the 
heroic or poetic fire enters the soul, the 
sky cracks, the scene falls asunder and 
men are revealed as great protagonists 
in a world of their own conjuring. 

All spots are sky-touched, not mere- 
ly the horizon. The dream sets up its 
Jacob's ladder wheresoever. We have 
but to open up communications to be 
in touch. Our familiar street is a 
sun-riviera. The great spiritual pres- 
ences do not so much as require us to 

[ 309 ] 



SOUL AND CIRCUMSTANCE 

go to them : they come to us whenever 
our hospitality calls. God will walk 
in my garden in the cool of my spirit- 
ual day. 



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